I'm trying to understand an example that I found in my notes but I don't understand the difference in my results compared to how my teacher did it. It's from Statistical Physics and it seems that there is always another way of doing problems which we are not taught but expected to know. Here is the problem: Under certain conditions, the surface waves in liquid helium are quantised and may be considered as quasi-particles with a dispersion law ε=(p/α)3/2ε = (|p|/α)^{3/2} where α is some constant and pp is the momentum. Such quasi-particles are called ripplons. Their quantum statistics is irrelevant for the regime of interest here (they are, in fact, bosons). Consider a two-dimensional ideal gas of N ripplons in thermal equilibrium at temperature T confined to an area A. Calculate the one-particle density of states n(ϵ)n(\epsilon) of the ripplon gas. THIS WHAT I DID: If we fit the plane waves in a square area A=L2 A=L^2 with periodic boundary conditions we can write: (px,py)=(kx,ky)=hL(nx,ny)(p_x,p_y) = \hbar (k_x,k_y) = \frac{h}{L}(n_x,n_y) So we have one mode per every (hL)2(\frac{h}{L})^2 of the pp -space and thus the pp -space density of states is Ah2\frac{A}{h^2} . We can use the following to calculate n(ϵ)n(\epsilon) : n(ϵ)dϵ=n(k)dkn(\epsilon)d\epsilon = n(k)dk Since p=kp=\hbar k , we have k=ϵ2/3α=ϵ2/32παhk=\epsilon ^{2/3}\frac{\alpha}{\hbar}=\epsilon ^{2/3}\frac{2\pi\alpha}{h} . Therefore: n(ϵ)=n(k)dkdϵ=16π3ϵ1/3α2A3h6n(\epsilon) = n(k) \frac{dk}{d\epsilon} = \frac{16 \pi^3 \epsilon ^{1/3} \alpha ^2 A}{3 h^6} I thought this procedure was good to use but suddenly the teacher does the following: THIS IS WHAT THE TEACHER DOES: Same pp -space densite of state : Ah2\frac{A}{h^2} . Then he states the number of microstates with energy not exceeding ϵ=(p/α)3/2\epsilon = (p/\alpha)^{3/2} : Γ(ϵ)=Ah2πp2\Gamma (\epsilon) = \frac{A}{h^2}\pi p^2 If anyone knows also why he does that and how he gets it because I received no explanation. Then he takes the derivative to get the density in energy-space: n(ϵ)=dΓdϵ=4πα2ϵ1/3A3h2n(\epsilon) = \frac{d\Gamma}{d\epsilon} = \frac{4 \pi \alpha^2 \epsilon ^{1/3}A}{3h^2} I don't understand why he does it this way and any help would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks!