The URL of this page is http://www.physics.smu.edu/scalise/P3374fa18/
Physics 3374 / 6351 - Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
Course Information
Fall 2018
"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 11:00PM-11:50AM in room 153 Fondren Science Building
- Office hours: after lecture and by appointment 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>
- Program Objective: Students will be able to solve problems in Statistical Mechanics
- Exam Dates: Open book, open notes, open Mathematica, closed Google.
- Midterm - Wednesday 3 October in class
- Final - Thursday 6 December 2018, 11:30AM - 2:30PM
- Practice exam
- 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 from Wikipedia;
The Mechanical Universe: 45. Temperature and Gas Laws;
Comparison of temperature scales.
- 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; Mechanical Universe episode 46;
Heat Engines: the Carnot Cycle;
The Einstein Szilard Refrigerators
- 04Sep15. See also A Mnemonic Scheme for Thermodynamics
by J.-C. Zhao, MRS Bulletin, Volume 34, Feb 2009 and Legendre transformation.
- 09Sep15. See also Maxwell relations,
Gaussian Integrals.
- 11Sep15. See also Stirling's approximation.
- 14Sep15. See also Unit sphere,
Kinetic theory of gases.
- 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,
What is negative temperature?.
- 30Sep15. See also Sackur-Tetrode Equation.
- 02Oct15. See also Practice problems,
Cumulant generating function.
- 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, Why are there no green stars? - Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy Blog
- 26Oct15. Partition function of hydrogen.
- 28Oct15. See also The Spin-Statistics Theorem
- 30Oct15. See also
Clebsch-Gordan Coefficients,
Phonons,
Debye specific heat,
Dulong-Petit law.
- 02Nov15. See also PHYS 5337/6338 lecture notes.
- 04Nov15. See also
- 06Nov15.
See also Heat Capacity of a Free Electron Fermi Gas.
- 09Nov15.
- 11Nov15.
- 13Nov15.
- White Dwarfs - guest lecture by Farley Ferrante
- 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.
- extra van der Waals notes.
- 23Nov15.
- 30Nov15.
- 02Dec15. See also
- 04Dec15. See also
- 07Dec15.
- There are more cosmic photons than cosmic neutrinos
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 Monday 27 August 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #2 (PDF format) - due Tuesday 4 September 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #3 (PDF format) - due Monday 10 September 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #4 (PDF format) - due Monday 17 September 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #5 (PDF format) - due Monday 24 September 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- No homework due on Monday 1 October 2018 because of the midterm exam.
- No homework due on Monday 8 October 2018 because of Fall Break.
- homework #6 (PDF format) - due Monday 15 October 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #7 (PDF format) - due Monday 22 October 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #8 (PDF format) - due Monday 29 October 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #9 (PDF format) - due Monday 5 November 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #10 (PDF format) - due Monday 12 November 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- homework #11 (PDF format) - due Monday 19 November 2018 at 11:59:59pm
- No homework due on Monday 26 November 2018 because of Thanksgiving.
- homework #12 (PDF format) - due Monday 3 December 2018 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
- Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics by Claude Garrod
- 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)
- Dr. Henry Glyde's lecture notes
- Mechanical Universe 45, 46, 47, 48.
- Maxwell's Demon: Why Warmth Disperses and Time Passes
by Hans Christian Von Baeyer
- Introduction to Renormalization by Simon DeDeo
- Welcome To Hotel Boltzmann
- Ludwig Boltzmann - Response to Josef Loschmidt
- H-Theorem
- Einstein's Approach to Statistical Mechanics: The 1902-04 Papers by
Luca Peliti and Raúl Rechtman
- Flanders & Swann - 'First And Second Law'
- Ising model 2 dim by Daniel Schroeder
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