Finite size effects on locating conformational transitions for macromolecules.

It has been shown from simulation and experiment that locations of peaks in structural and thermodynamic quantities accompanying "phase" transitions of a single macromolecule (collapse or crystallization/melting) do not coincide. Thus, for chains with finite lengths these different measures yield apparently different results for transition temperatures. To resolve this issue we use scaling, verified by computer simulations, to conclusively show that these different locations for peak positions are simply a consequence of the finite chain length, as has been conjectured previously.