[SadBloke]

I'm working on a PChem problem but I'm not really sure how to start it.

Assume you have 10 particles distributed among 3 energy levels (N1,N2,N3 and N4).
There are 6 particles in N1, 3 particles in N2, and 1 particle in N3 (0 particles in N4).
The question says calculate the degeneracy W for this distribution.

I'm a little confused as to what "degeneracy W" means but I think its the number of equivalent microstates. For example, if all 10 particles were in N1, W=1 because there is only one state where that is true. If 9 were in N1 and 1 in N2, then W=10 because there are ten ways to arrange particles so that that is true. My question is: How can I calculate the "degeneracy W" for the above question?

Once W is calculate, is the probability W/(Total # of microstates)?  So it would be W/(4^10)?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Corribus]

I hate to just link to Wikipedia pages but I'm about to nod off here.

See if this helps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann's_entropy_formula

[SadBloke]

Somewhat helpful...clarified what W is, at least. I'm still not entirely sure how to calculate W for my question, though. If W= N!/Π(N_i)!, then W in my example would be 10!/(6!*3!*1)?

So there would be 840 micro states that would achieve that particle distribution?

[Corribus]

Yes, this is what I calculated as well.  Notice the equation works for the more simple scenarios you described in your opening post.

[SadBloke]

Alright, thanks!