STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND THERMODYNAMICS OF IRREVERSIBLE PROCESSES VOLUME II Irreversible Processes in Polyatomic Gases

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to describe the approach to equilibrium of a gas of polyatomic molecules. This is only a preliminary paper; we shall consider the case of a single depole interacting through electrostatic forces with ions. This example shows clearly the main differences between the approach to equilibrium of the translational and internal degrees of freedom.