Particle number

In thermodynamics, the particle number (symbol N) of a thermodynamic system is the number of constituent particles in that system.^[1] The particle number is a fundamental thermodynamic property which is conjugate to the chemical potential. Unlike most physical quantities, the particle number is a dimensionless quantity, specifically a countable quantity. It is an extensive property, as it is directly proportional to the size of the system under consideration and thus meaningful only for closed systems.

A constituent particle is one that cannot be broken into smaller pieces at the scale of energy k·T involved in the process (where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature). For example, in a thermodynamic system consisting of a piston containing water vapour, the particle number is the number of water molecules in the system. The meaning of constituent particles, and thereby of particle numbers, is thus temperature-dependent.