PH304 Take Home Exam III Spring 2018

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Honor Code.”
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Instructions
This take home exam is open book, notes, etc. You may not discuss any part of this test with any person, spirit,
sentient computer, lower being, or higher being (except your humble professor). Give clear, detailed answers to
each question and show your work for any step that's not automatically obvious. Write each problem starting on a
separate sheet of paper, writing on only one side of the page. Arrange your answers in order, and staple them
together with this page on top.
Each problem will be graded on a 10-point scale. Here is how I will determine your grade:
High Level of Understanding Demonstrated
10 points: correct answer and explanation
9 points: correct reasoning with a reasonable answer but minor computational errors
Partial Understanding Demonstrated
7 points: physics errors (or correct setup but incomplete execution)
5 points: major physics errors (or partial justification provided even if answer is correct)
Little to No Understanding Demonstrated
3 points: little relevant work (or no justification provided even if the answer is correct)
1 point: very little relevant work
0 points: no relevant work or no answer submitted, recopy of the problem statement with no
additional work

Questions

1. (Boltzmann's Zipper — A simple model for unwinding of DNA molecules)

A zipper has links. Each link has a state in which it is closed with energy 0 and a state in which it is open with
energy . We require, however, that the zipper can only unzip from the left end, and that the link number can
only open if all links to the left (1, 2, ⋯ , − 1) are already open.
a. Show that the partition function can be summed in the form:

1 − exp − + 1
=
1 − exp −
b. Find the average number of open links in the high temperature limit, ≪ 1.
PH304 Take Home Exam III Spring 2018

2. At very high temperatures (such as those in the early universe), we can treat protons and neutrons as two
different states of the same particle, the “nucleon.” The mass of a neutron is ∆ = 2.3 × 10 kg more than
the mass of a proton, so the energy of a neutron is ∆! = ∆ " # more than the energy of a proton. In other
words, consider the early universe to be a gas of nucleons either in the ground state (protons) or the excited
state (neutrons). If the nucleons were in thermal equilibrium at a temperature of 10$$ K, what fractions of the
nucleons were protons and what fraction were neutrons?

3. The table below shows experimental values of the molar heat capacity of Palladium as a function of
temperature.

T (K) C (mJ/K) T (K) C (mJ/K) T (K) C (mJ/K) T (K) C (mJ/K)

1.539 15.36 2.319 23.91 3.086 32.21 3.719 40.46
1.665 16.81 2.440 24.93 3.169 33.29 3.847 42.20
1.861 18.64 2.574 26.27 3.311 34.90 3.962 43.90
2.008 20.60 2.783 28.59 3.473 36.74 4.094 45.66
2.236 23.08 2.963 30.84 3.592 38.86

a. Make a graph of & vs. ' or &/' vs. ' # (as in Figure 7.28) for this data. You are free to choose which
graph to make. Find the appropriate best-fit curve to this data for the Debye/free electron model. Make
sure the fit parameters are displayed on your graph.
b. From your fit, determine the Debye temperature (') ) for Palladium.
c. From your fit, determine the Fermi temperature ('* ) for Palladium.

4. In problem 7.23, you investigated the physics of white dwarf stars as degenerate Fermi gases. In this problem,
you will do the same for neutron stars, which are made entirely of neutrons. The star is supported against
gravitational collapse by the degeneracy pressure.
a. Express the average kinetic energy of the neutrons in the star as a function of the neutron mass ( + ),
stellar mass (,), and stellar radius (-).
b. Find the equilibrium radius of the star as a function of , and +. This is the radius that minimizes the
total energy (.grav + .kinetic).

c. Calculate the radius, density, Fermi energy, and Fermi temperature of a one-solar-mass neutron star.
d. Above what mass would a neutron star become relativistic and hence unstable (causing it to collapse
into a black hole)?
PH304 Take Home Exam III Spring 2018

5. A water molecule can vibrate in various ways, but the easiest type of vibration to excite is the “flexing” mode in
which the hydrogen atoms move toward and away from each other but the HO bonds do not stretch. The
oscillations of this mode are approximately harmonic, with a frequency of 4.8 × 10$ Hz. The energy levels for
$ <
such an oscillator are # ℎ;, # ℎ;, # ℎ;, and so on (where ℎ is Planck’s constant). None of these levels are
degenerate.

a. Calculate the probability of a water molecule being in its flexing ground state and in each of the
first two excited states, assuming that it is in equilibrium with a reservoir (say the atmosphere)
at 300 K. You will need to compute a partition function with enough Boltzmann factors that you
can be reasonably confident that its value is correct to four significant digits. If you can calculate
the infinite sum, that’s even better.
b. Repeat the calculation for a water molecule in equilibrium with a reservoir at 700 K (perhaps a
steam turbine.)
c. Consider the heat capacity of a polyatomic ideal gas, such as water, as a function of temperature.
Based on the results of the previous two calculations, comment on the contribution of
vibrational degrees of freedom to the heat capacity. (See Fig 1.13 in your text for a graph of the
heat capacity of a diatomic ideal gas as a function of temperature.)