A microstate continuum is the fluctuation spectrum of a thermodynamic system in the classical limit of high temperatures. Classical here is to be understood in opposition to quantum statistical mechanics. Quantum statistical mechanics is the study of statistical ensembles of quantum mechanical systems. ...
The microstates interconvert rapidly and the global state reflects the average behavior of these microstates.
A collection of microstates forms an ensemble, and statistical mechanics provides the conceptual tools for understanding a global state in terms of its constituent microstates.
Microstates of a protein can be further distinguished by different positions and orientations of the surrounding water molecules, and possibly by ions in solution.
This space is a continuum, so what we mean by the `number of states' is simply the volume (generalised to 6N dimensions) of phase space occupied by the gas molecules.
Thus it becomes clear that entropy is intimately associated with the number of microstates for a given macrostate.
Now remove the constraint and allow access to the whole volume V. The number of microstates is now (V/v)N, which is larger by a factor of 2N than that for the constrained case (and remember that N ~ 1023).
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