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[Phys-l] another "states" conundrum



This is only tangentially related to this morning's discussion
about "states of matter". The point of tangency is that the
English language does not always line up very well with physical
reality.

In the context of introductory quantum mechanics, "state"
obviously means quantum state aka microstate.

In the context of classical thermodynamics, "state" obviously
means thermodynamic state, i.e. macrostate.

That's all fine until we start doing statistical mechanics.
The word "state" gets thrown around, and nobody has any idea
whether it means microstate or macrostate.

This is another illustration of the suggestion I made earlier:
Sometimes the only way to lift the ambiguity is to coin new
terms (e.g. microstate and macrostate).