Degeneracy

[Joanna Pham - 2D]

Today Professor Lavelle talked about dengenracy. I was wondering if someone could explain what degeneracy actually is. I’m having a hard time thinking about it conceptually? Is it just the number of possible outcomes?

[Emma Scholes 1L]

Degeneracy is the number of ways of achieving a given energy state.

[Mona El Masri 1F]

Degeneracy (W)= # of ways of achieving a given entry state.. *low energy

* W= 2^N
The more atoms or particles you have, the bigger the degeneracy.

[Laura Gong 3H]

Degeneracy refers to number of microstates in a system that have the same energy level.

[Samantha Chang 2K]

In lecture Lavelle defined degeneracy as the number of ways of achieving a given energy state, and it can help us find entropy.

[Kayla Vo 1B]

Degeneracy is the number of ways of achieving a specific energy state. In other words, there are different positions and these configurations determine the energy state.

W=(number of possible positions of an atom)^(number of particles).

Gases have a higher degeneracy because they occupy larger volumes compared to solids and liquids. This fact allows gases to have more possible configurations than the other states. Looking at the equation S=kBln(W), you can see that entropy (S) and degeneracy (W) have a direct relationship. As a result, gases have the largest degeneracy and entropy.