The URL of this page is http://www.physics.smu.edu/scalise/P3374fa15/
Physics 3374 / 6351 - Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
Course Information
Fall 2015
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying
statistical mechanics, died in 1906 by his own hand.
Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on his work, died similarly in 1933.
Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps
it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously."
-- David L. Goodstein (States of Matter, Dover 1985)
- Lecturer:
Professor Randall J. Scalise
- Meeting time and place: MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM in room 155 Fondren Science Building
- Office hours: after lecture and Tuesday, Thursday 12:30PM-2:30PM in room 107 Fondren Science Building
- Contact:
- Call or leave a message at 768-2504, or
- Leave a note in the Physics Department Office - 102 Fondren Science, or
- send me e-mail:
<scalise@smu.edu>
- Exam Dates: Open book, open notes, open Mathematica, closed internet.
- Midterm - Wednesday 7 October in class, open book/notes
- Final - Tuesday 15 December 2015, 11:30AM-2:30PM in room 155 Fondren Science Building, open book/notes
- Mathematica tutorial: PDF 4 pages, 32563 bytes
- Grading:
- Homework - 60% (drop lowest)
- Midterm Examination - 20%
- Final Examination - 20%
- PHYS 3374 Text: An Introduction to Thermal Physics by Daniel V. Schroeder
- Lecture notes:
- 24Aug15.
- 26Aug15. See also Temperature.
- 28Aug15. See also Perpetual Motion Machine,
Perpetual Motion from Wikipedia.
- 31Aug15. See also First Law by Professor Valery Kiryukhin at Rutgers.
- 02Sep15. See also Third Law of Thermodynamics,
Carnot Engine.
- 04Sep15. See also A Mnemonic Scheme for Thermodynamics
by J.-C. Zhao, MRS Bulletin, Volume 34, Feb 2009 and Legendre transformation.
- 09Sep15. See also Gaussian Integrals.
- 11Sep15. See also Stirling's approximation.
- 14Sep15. See also Unit sphere.
- 16Sep15. See also Lagrange multipliers.
- 18Sep15. See also Partition Function.
- 21Sep15.
- 23Sep15. See also Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
- 25Sep15. See also Pierre Curie's Law.
- 28Sep15.
See also Below Absolute Zero: Negative Temperatures Explained,
Negative temperature.
- 30Sep15. See also Sackur-Tetrode Equation.
- 02Oct15. See also Practice problems.
- 05Oct15.
- 09Oct15. See also
- 14Oct15. See also
- 16Oct15.
- 19Oct15. See also Ultraviolet catastrophe
- 21Oct15. See also Black body radiation,
Planck's Law, Thermodynamics of Blackbody Radiation by Robert E. Kelly.
- 23Oct15. See also Some paradoxes, errors, and resolutions concerning the spectral
optimization of human vision by Bernard H. Soffer and David K. Lynch, Am. J. Phys. 67(11), November 1999.
- 26Oct15.
- 28Oct15.
- 30Oct15. See also
Clebsch-Gordan Coefficients,
Phonons,
Debye specific heat,
Dulong-Petit law.
- 02Nov15.
- 04Nov15. See also
- 06Nov15.
See also Heat Capacity of a Free Electron Fermi Gas.
- 09Nov15.
- 11Nov15.
- 13Nov15.
- 16Nov15.
See also Bose-Einstein condensate,
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001,
BEC animation,
Bose-Einstein Condensates with Rubidium Atoms.
- 18Nov15.
- 20Nov15.
See also Van der Waals equation,
vdW Slides,
Cluster Expansion.
- 23Nov15.
- 30Nov15.
- 02Dec15. See also
- 04Dec15. See also
- 07Dec15.
Professor Kent Hornbostel's lecture notes based on grown-up Reif
Homework: Due dates are strictly enforced.
50% if late; 0% once the solutions are posted. You may work together, but
the work that you turn in should be unique. Identical work will receive a
grade that is divided among all parties. It is possible to find answers to
some homework problems on the internet; do not do this. The point, after all,
is not to fool me into thinking that you have learned physics, but rather actually
to learn some physics.
- homework #1 (PDF format) - due Sunday 30 August at 11:59:59PM
- homework #2 (PDF format) - due Sunday 6 September at 11:59:59PM
- homework #3 (PDF format) - due Sunday 13 September at 11:59:59PM
- homework #4 (PDF format) - due Sunday 20 September at 11:59:59PM
- homework #5 (PDF format) - due Sunday 27 September at 11:59:59PM
- No homework due on 4 October because of the midterm exam.
- No homework due on 11 October because of Fall Break.
- homework #6 (PDF format) - due Sunday 18 October at 11:59:59PM
- homework #7 (PDF format) - due Sunday 25 October at 11:59:59PM
- homework #8 (PDF format) - due Sunday 1 November at 11:59:59PM
- homework #9 (PDF format) - due Sunday 8 November at 11:59:59PM
- homework #10 (PDF format) - due Sunday 15 November at 11:59:59PM
- homework #11 (PDF format) - due Sunday 22 November at 11:59:59PM
- No homework due on 29 November because of Thanksgiving Break.
- homework #12 (PDF format) - due Sunday 6 December at 11:59:59PM
Homework Solutions
Disability Accommodations, Religious and Excused Absences
Official University Calendar
Other Resources:
- A Mnemonic Scheme for Thermodynamics by J.-C. Zhao, MRS Bulletin, Volume 34, Feb 2009.
- "Baby Reif" Statistical Physics: Berkeley Physics Course, Vol. 5 by Frederick Reif
- Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics by Frederick Reif
- Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters and Complexity by James P. Sethna
- Heat and Thermodynamics by Mark Waldo Zemansky
- The Principles of Chemical Equilibrium: With Applications in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering by K.G. Denbigh
- More textbooks
- Thermal Physics by Charles Kittel and Herbert Kroemer
- Statistical Mechanics by Kerson Huang
- Statistical Physics by L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz
(Volume 5 of the Course of Theoretical Physics)
- Feynman lectures Volume 1 Chapters 39-46
- Statistical Mechanics: A Set Of Lectures by Richard P. Feynman
- Leonard Susskind - Statistical Mechanics 2009 from YouTube
- Leonard Susskind - Statistical Mechanics 2013 from YouTube
- Leonard Susskind | Lecture 1: Boltzmann and the Arrow of Time
- Partition Function - Wikipedia
- Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
- Classical statistical mechanics
Lecture Series on Classical Physics by Prof.V.Balakrishnan, Department of Physics, IIT Madras.
- Course in Thermal and Statistical Physics
undergraduate class on thermal and statistical physics by Mark Ancliff
- Physics 12c Statistical Mechanics by John Preskill @Caltech
- MIT Open Courseware (Physics)
- Mechanical Universe 45, 46, 47, 48.
- Maxwell's Demon: Why Warmth Disperses and Time Passes
by Hans Christian Von Baeyer
- Welcome To Hotel Boltzmann
- Einstein's Approach to Statistical Mechanics: The 1902-04 Papers by
Luca Peliti and Raúl Rechtman
- Flanders & Swann - 'First And Second Law'
Back to Professor Scalise's Home Page
"[Thermodynamics] is the only physical theory of a general nature of which
I am convinced that it will never be overthrown."
--Albert Einstein