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In physics, a degree of freedom is an independent physical parameter in the formal description of the state of a
physical system. The set of all dimensions of a system is known as a phase space, and degrees of freedom are
sometimes referred to as its dimensions.
1 Definition
2 Degrees of freedom of gas molecules
3 Independent degrees of freedom
3.1 Demonstrations
4 Quadratic degrees of freedom
4.1 Quadratic and independent degree of freedom
4.2 Equipartition theorem
5 Generalizations
6 References
A degree of freedom of a physical system refers to a (typically real) parameter that is necessary to characterize
the state of a physical system.
Consider a point particle that is free to move in three dimensions. The location of any particle in three-
dimensional space can be specified by three position coordinates: x, y, and z. The direction and speed at which
a particle moves can be described in terms of three velocity components, e.g. v
x
, v
y
, and v
z
. If the time
evolution of the system is deterministic, where the state at one instant uniquely determines its past and future
position and velocity as a function of time, such a system will have six degrees of freedom. If the motion of the
particle is constrained to a lower number of dimensions if, for example, the particle must move along a wire
or on a fixed surface then the system will have less than six degrees of freedom. On the other hand, a system
with an extended object that may rotate or vibrate can have more than six degrees of freedom. A force on the
particle that depends only upon time and the particle's position and velocity fits this description.
In mechanics, a point particle's state at any given time can be described with position and velocity coordinates
in the Lagrangian formalism, or with position and momentum coordinates in the Hamiltonian formalism.
Similarly, in statistical mechanics, a degree of freedom is a single scalar number describing the microstate of a
system.
[1]
The specification of all microstates of a system is a point in the system's phase space.
A degree of freedom may be any useful property that is not dependent on other variables. For example, in the
3D ideal chain model, two angles are necessary to describe each monomer's orientation.
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Different ways of visualizing the 6
degrees of freedom of a diatomic
molecule. (CM: center of mass of the
system, T: translational motion, R:
rotational motion, V: vibrational
motion.)
In statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, it is often useful to specify quadratic degrees of freedom. These
are degrees of freedom that contribute in a quadratic way to the energy of the system. They are also variables
that contribute quadratically to the Hamiltonian.
In three-dimensional space, three degrees of freedom are associated with
the movement of a particle. A diatomic gas molecule thus has 6 degrees
of freedom. This set may be decomposed in terms of translations,
rotations, and vibrations of the molecule. The center of mass motion of
the entire molecule accounts for 3 degrees of freedom. In addition, the
molecule has two rotational degrees of motion and one vibrational mode.
The rotations occur around the two axes perpendicular to the line
between the two atoms. The rotation around the atomatom bond is not a
physical rotation. This yields, for a diatomic molecule, a decomposition
of:
For a general (non-linear) molecule with N > 2 atoms, all 3 rotational
degrees of freedom are considered, resulting in the decomposition:
which means that an N-atom molecule has 3N 6 vibrational degrees
of freedom for N > 2. In special cases, such as adsorbed large molecules, the rotational degrees of freedom can
be limited to only one.
[2]
As defined above one can also count degrees of freedom using the minimum number of coordinates required to
specify a position. This is done as follows:
For a single particle we need 2 coordinates in a 2-D plane to specify its position and 3 coordinates in 3-D
plane. Thus its degree of freedom in a 3-D plane is 3.
1.
For a body consisting of 2 particles (ex. a diatomic molecule) in a 3-D plane with constant distance
between them (let's say d) we can show (below) its degrees of freedom to be 5.
2.
Let's say one particle in this body has coordinate (x
1
,y
1
,z
1
) and the other has coordinate (x
2
,y
2
,z
2
) with z
2
unknown. Application of the formula for distance between two coordinates
results in one equation with one unknown, in which we can solve for z
2
. One of x
1
, x
2
, y
1
, y
2
, z
1
, or z
2
can be
unknown.
Contrary to the classical equipartition theorem, at room temperature, the vibrational motion of molecules
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typically makes negligible contributions to the heat capacity. This is because these degrees of freedom are
frozen because the spacing between the energy eigenvalues exceeds the energy corresponding to ambient
temperatures (k
B
T). In the following table such degrees of freedom are disregarded because of their low effect
on total energy. However, at very high temperatures they cannot be neglected.
Monatomic Linear molecules Non-linear molecules
Translation (x, y, and z) 3 3 3
Rotation (x, y, and z) 0 2 3
Vibration 0 3N 5 3N 6
Total 3 3N 3N
The set of degrees of freedom X
1
,,X
N
of a system is independent if the energy associated with the set can
be written in the following form:
where E
i
is a function of the sole variable X
i
.
example: if X
1
and X
2
are two degrees of freedom, and E is the associated energy:
If , then the two degrees of freedom are independent.
If , then the two degrees of freedom are not independent. The term
involving the product of X
1
and X
2
is a coupling term, that describes an interaction between the
two degrees of freedom.
At thermodynamic equilibrium, X
1
,,X
N
are all statistically independent of each other.
For i from 1 to N, the value of the ith degree of freedom X
i
is distributed according to the Boltzmann
distribution. Its probability density function is the following:
,
In this section, and throughout the article the brackets denote the mean of the quantity they enclose.
The internal energy of the system is the sum of the average energies associated to each of the degrees of
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freedom:
Demonstrations
A system exchanges energy in the form of heat with its surroundings and the number of particles in the system
remains fixed. This corresponds to studying the system in the canonical ensemble. Note that in statistical
mechanics, a result that is demonstrated for a system in a particular ensemble remains true for this system at the
thermodynamic limit in any ensemble. In the canonical ensemble, at thermodynamic equilibrium, the state of
the system is distributed among all micro-states according to the Boltzmann distribution. If T is the system's
temperature and k
B
is Boltzmann's constant, then the probability density function associated to each micro-state
is the following:
,
The denominator in the above expression plays an important role.
[3]
This expression immediately breaks down
into a product of terms depending of a single degree of freedom:
The existence of such a breakdown of the multidimensional probability density function into a product of
functions of one variable is enough by itself to demonstrate that X
1
,,X
N
are statistically independent from
each other.
Since each function p
i
is normalized, it follows immediately that p
i
is the probability density function of the
degree of freedom X
i
, for i from 1 to N.
Finally, the internal energy of the system is its mean energy. The energy of a degree of freedom E
i
is a function
of the sole variable X
i
. Since X
1
,,X
N
are independent from each other, the energies E
1
(X
1
),,E
N
(X
N
)
are also statistically independent from each other. The total internal energy of the system can thus be written as:
A degree of freedom X
i
is quadratic if the energy terms associated to this degree of freedom can be written as
,
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where Y is a linear combination of other quadratic degrees of freedom.
example: if X
1
and X
2
are two degrees of freedom, and E is the associated energy:
If , then the two degrees of freedom are not independent and
non-quadratic.
If , then the two degrees of freedom are independent and non-quadratic.
If , then the two degrees of freedom are not independent but are
quadratic.
If , then the two degrees of freedom are independent and quadratic.
For example, in Newtonian mechanics, the dynamics of a system of quadratic degrees of freedom are controlled
by a set of homogeneous linear differential equations with constant coefficients.
Quadratic and independent degree of freedom
X
1
,,X
N
are quadratic and independent degrees of freedom if the energy associated to a microstate of the
system they represent can be written as:
Equipartition theorem
In the classical limit of statistical mechanics, at thermodynamic equilibrium, the internal energy of a system of
N quadratic and independent degrees of freedom is:
Here, the mean energy associated with a degree of freedom is:
Since the degrees of freedom are independent, the internal energy of the system is equal to the sum of the mean
energy associated with each degree of freedom, which demonstrates the result.
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The description of a system's state as a point in its phase space, although mathematically convenient, is thought
to be fundamentally inaccurate. In quantum mechanics, the motion degrees of freedom are superseded with the
concept of wave function, and operators which correspond to other degrees of freedom have discrete spectra.
For example, intrinsic angular momentum operator (which corresponds to the rotational freedom) for an
electron or photon have only two eigenvalues, and a continuous rotational freedom of classical bodies becomes
reduced to so named spin for these and other microscopic particles. This effect of discreteness (sometimes
referred to as quantization, although the latter is a much broader concept) becomes dominant when action has
an order of magnitude of the Planck constant, and individual degrees of freedom cannot be distinguished then.
^ Reif, F. (2009). Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. p. 51.
ISBN 1-57766-612-7.
1.
^ Thomas Waldmann, Jens Klein, Harry E. Hoster, R. Jrgen Behm (2012), "Stabilization of Large Adsorbates by
Rotational Entropy: A Time-Resolved Variable-Temperature STM Study" (in German), ChemPhysChem: pp. n/an/a,
doi:10.1002/cphc.201200531 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Fcphc.201200531)
2.
^ "Configuration integral (statistical mechanics)" (http://clesm.mae.ufl.edu/wiki.pub/index.php
/Configuration_integral_%28statistical_mechanics%29#Thermodynamic_properties).
3.
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