Hello everyone,
Today, in class, I learned about the equipartition, and the degrees of freedom a thing can possess. My professor had said that if you were to consider a gas composed of single atoms, then the atoms couldn't have any degrees of freedom due to rotation, because you wouldn't be able to distinguish the rotation.
What exactly does that mean, and why does that warrant our not considering it as a degree of freedom.
Also, would knowing this also explain why, when counting the degrees of freedom, you don't consider clockwise and counterclockwise rotation?
Today, in class, I learned about the equipartition, and the degrees of freedom a thing can possess. My professor had said that if you were to consider a gas composed of single atoms, then the atoms couldn't have any degrees of freedom due to rotation, because you wouldn't be able to distinguish the rotation.
What exactly does that mean, and why does that warrant our not considering it as a degree of freedom.
Also, would knowing this also explain why, when counting the degrees of freedom, you don't consider clockwise and counterclockwise rotation?