Re: [Phys-l] Gibbs paradox (redux)

[brian whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>]

On 6/26/2011 5:09 PM, Carl Mungan wrote:
> /snip/ Would anything change if we could somehow manufacture milk with 
> *exactly* identical globules? (Okay, we surely couldn't do this with 
> milk. So maybe I instead manufacture macroscopically small but 
> microscopically large - mesoscopically sized? - metal balls and 
> suspend them in some suitable - preferably dense - solvent.) I'm 
> thinking that as long as the particles are large compared to their 
> thermal de Broglie wavelengths then they are classical, whether 
> exactly identical or not. Would exact identicality suddenly make the 
> particles indistinguishable instead of distinguishable? I'm thinking 
> not for large enough particles, but am willing to be open minded if 
> you can give me a good reason.
> Thanks for bearing with me and for the discussion so far; it has helped clarify my puzzlement about Gibbs paradox. -Carl

Interesting thought about partitioning particles.        The smaller the 
compartment in which one imprisons a particle, the more sure the 
position certainty about that particle, I imagine?     So a million 
partitions, a billion partitions imply knowing  a number of spatial 
coordinates; valuable knowledge, on might suppose?


Brian W