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Rigid Rotor and Disc Energy Distributions

Please click the link below for a full description of this subject. This animation shows the difference in the energy distributions for free disks and rotors that move translationally in 2 dimensions. The energy distribution for the free disks is a simple exponential, `f_D(E)=exp(-E/E_(avg))` where `E` is the disk energy in a particular bin and `E_(avg)` is the average energy of the disks. On the hand, the distribution of energy of the rotors has functional form: `f_R(E)=sqrt(E/E_(avg))exp(-3E/(2E_(avg)))`. The extra square root factor is due to the rotational degree of freedom of the rotors. It's important to understand that, for the numerical histogram plots to converge to the theoretical values, at least several minutes of computer iteration will be needed even with the fastest PC. For the math associated with the rotor translation and rotation see Rotor Math