Gibb’s Paradox Sarah Marie Maddox

A container has an ideal gas with N number of particles and volume V A divider separates the container The number density is the same throughout the container

Removing the divider should not increase the entropy because it is an extensive quantity However it is found that the entropy is increased by 2NR (ln 2) The miscalculation arises because the molecules were not considered to be indistinguishable and an entropy of mixing was calculated

The paradox occurs when the particles are treated as distinguishable When the particles are thought to be distinguishable the number of states possible is over estimated