Re: Second law in the microscopic scale

[David Bowman <David_Bowman@GEORGETOWNCOLLEGE.EDU>]

Regarding Jack U's comment:

>    Essentially yes.  If N is the number of particles in the system,
> then the random-fluctuation probability is like 1/sqrt(N) - See
> Landau and Lifshitz introduction.
>                             Jack
 
If we include the effects of correlations between the particles I
believe the relative fluctuations go more like sqrt([xi]^d / N) where
[xi] is the correlation length and d is the spatial dimensionality
of the system (assuming the interactions between the particles are
finite-ranged).

David Bowman