- #1
Mireno
- 3
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Can anyone help me. I am very confused about the chemical potential.
In the following equation
dU = TdS - pdV + u dN, where u is the chemical potential
it seems to me that if you add particles to a system you are increasing the energy of that system, i.e. the chemical potential is positive.
Why is it then that the chemical potential is negative above a certain temperature (as can be seen by taken the derivative of the canonical partition function with respect to the number of particles (times -1/kT))?
This would seem to suggest that as you add particles to a system, the energy of the system decreases!
In the following equation
dU = TdS - pdV + u dN, where u is the chemical potential
it seems to me that if you add particles to a system you are increasing the energy of that system, i.e. the chemical potential is positive.
Why is it then that the chemical potential is negative above a certain temperature (as can be seen by taken the derivative of the canonical partition function with respect to the number of particles (times -1/kT))?
This would seem to suggest that as you add particles to a system, the energy of the system decreases!