Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In thermodynamics, a microstate describes a specific detailed microscopic configuration of a system. In contrast, the macrostate of a system refers to its macroscopic bulk properties such as its temperature and pressure. Large numbers of distinct microstates can all have the same macroscopic appearance, and thus a macrostate can be regarded as a simplified description of a large set of possible microstates. The entropy of a macrostate can be defined in terms of the size of its set of microstates, and vice versa. This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it. See also: phase degrees of freedom quantum physics ergodic hypothesis statistical mechanics statistical ensemble External links Some illustrations of microstates vs. macrostates This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.