Saturday, 5 September 2020

thermodynamics - Degrees of freedom in a diatomic molecule



We know that a monatomic compound can only have 3 degrees of freedom as we can consider it to be a point mass. However now that we consider a diatomic molecule, there are 3 degrees of freedom in translational movement, 1 degree in vibration and the last is in rotation. However why is it that rotation can only have 1 degree of freedom when it can rotate in an infinite number of directions?




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