Good work today folks! I’ve finally gotten around to reading your questions, so now I can respond. The first question is:

#12 – we don’t understand what they are trying to get at/how to show it.

The question says, “12. Show that

\frac{dN(\upsilon)}{Nd\upsilon_{x}d\upsilon_{y}d\upsilon_{z}}= Ae^{-\frac{a\upsilon^{2}}{2}} = F(\upsilon)

Take a look at Eq. (2) on pg. 13 and you’ll see this:

\frac{dN(\upsilon)}{N}= F(\upsilon)d\upsilon = f(\upsilon_{x})f(\upsilon_{y})f(\upsilon_{z})d\upsilon_{x}d\upsilon_{y}d\upsilon_{z}

Use your response from CTQ 11 with this. I hope that helps.

The second question was actually a statement, “Making sure we know physical meanings that go with the math we just did.” Since that isn’t really a question, I’m not sure how to answer it. I’ll try to answer what I think you meant, and you can tell me if I was correct in my interpretation.

During class, we talked about translating between English, Math (ok, Calculus) and Physics. For example, the English sentence, “What is the annular volume of the sphere when the radius increases infinitesimally” became the relationship dV=4\pi r^{2}dr.

The best way to get better at this type of translation (which is very important in pchem) is to work through the derivations in the text of your book. The more you do that, the better you’ll get. Sort of like solving crossword puzzles.