Retrieving "Ergodic Hypothesis" from the archives

Cross-reference notes under review

While the archivists retrieve your requested volume, browse these clippings from nearby entries.

1. Statistical Mechanics

   Linked via "ergodic hypothesis"

   The Ergodic Hypothesis (The Postulate of Time-Averaging Equivalence)
   The cornerstone of early statistical mechanics, the ergodic hypothesis, posits that, over sufficiently long times, a system, when left undisturbed, will eventually pass arbitrarily close to every state consistent with its total energy ($E$). Crucially, this means that the time average of any physical quantity calculated over this long trajectory is equal to the ensemble average of that quantity calculated over all accessible microstates. While mathematically conve…