Our toy model consists of 2 dice. The
macrostates are charaterized by the energy of the system given by the sum [ n ] of the dots.
The number [ Ω = Ω(n) ] of compatible microstates for a given macrostate is the number of ways you can roll this sum.
We have
Ω(2) = Ω(12) = 1
Ω(3) = Ω(11) = 2
Ω(4) = Ω(10) = 3
Ω(5) = Ω(9) = 4
Ω(6) = Ω(8) = 5
Ω(7) = 6
or
Ω(2≤n≤7) = n - 1
Ω(7≤n≤12) = 13 - n
For convenience, we also set
Ω(n<2) = Ω(n>12) = 0
In statistical mechanics, temperature is not defined as an average energy, but rather (in suitable units) as the reciprocal of thermodynamic [ β ] and thus
T = Ω/Ω'
For our discrete system, we replace the derivative with the mean of the forward and backward difference quotient of step size 1, ie
Ω'(n) = 1/2 { (Ω(n+1) - Ω(n))/1 + (Ω(n) - Ω(n-1))/1 }
= 1/2 { Ω(n+1) - Ω(n-1) }
A short calculation shows
Ω'(2≤n<7) = 1
Ω'(n=7) = 0
Ω'(7<n≤12) = -1
and thus
T(2≤n<7) = Ω(n) = n - 1 > 0
T(n=7) = ∞
T(7<n≤12) = -Ω(n) = n - 13 < 0
Even though our model has no notion of
kinetic energy, there's still a nice relationship between
total energy and temperature.
This is particularly instructive if we offset our energy scale:
For [ E = n - 7 ] we have
E(T>0) = T - 6 ∈ [-5,0[
E(T=∞) = 0
E(T<0) = T + 6 ∈ ]0,5]
As we see here, negative temperatures correspond to higher energies, and it only takes a finite amount of energy to go from positive to infinite and from infinite to negative temperature states.