Re: [Phys-l] third law of thermo

[chuck britton <cvbritton@mac.com>]

Might this imply that 'every' ideal fermi gas could be expected to 
undergo a Bose Condensation at a sufficiently low T?

The Stat Mech prof that I needed to satisfy in grad school had a 
'standard' qualifier question that amounted to 'calculating' Bose 
Condensation T for some system.

	(I'm eagerly anticipating some good info flow.)


At 10:22 AM -0500 2/17/10, Carl Mungan wrote:
> I recognize that there are many different views on the 3rd law.
> Specifically S does not always go to zero as T->0. However, I thought
> one could safely say it approaches a constant (often called the
> residual entropy) with zero slope, ie dS/dT->0 as T->0 (technically
> it's a partial derivative with N,V,B,etc held constant). Apparently I
> must be wrong about that however. Consider an ideal fermi gas. It has
> C linearly proportional to T at low T. Then dS/dT=C/T=nonzero
> constant as T->0.
>
> Do others agree with my analysis or am I missing some key idea? -Carl
> --
> Carl E Mungan, Assoc Prof of Physics  410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)