February

February

January | February | March | April | May

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

1
lecture 5

Extremum principles for free energies, Maxwell relations, response functions and relations between them

make-up lecture
2

3 4
lecture 6

Curvature of free energies and stability requirements for response functions, kinetic theory of ideal gas, Maxwell velocity distribution

supplemental notes

Heat engines, thermodynamic efficiency, Carnot cycle
5 6
lecture 7

Ergodic hypothesis, statisitcal ensembles, density matrix, Liouville's theorem

HW #1 due
7 8 9

10 11
lecture 8

Microcanonical ensemble, density of states and connection to entropy, entropy of the ideal gas and problem of extensivity
12 13
lecture 9

Entropy of mixing and Gibbs paradox, indistinguishable particles, the canonical ensemble and the canonical partition function

HW #2 due
14 15
lecture 10

Helholtz free energy and the canonical partition function, energy fluctuations, equivalence of canonical and microcanonical ensembles in the thermodynamic limit

make-up lecture
16

17 18
lecture 11

Average energy vs most probably energy, Stirling's formula, factoring the canonical partition function for non-interacting objects, Maxwell velocity distribution revisited, the virial theorm
19 20
lecture 12

The equipartition theorem, elastic vibrations of a solid and the law of Dulong and Petit, paramagnetism of classical spins

HW #3 due
21 22 23

24 25
lecture 13

The Curie law of paramagnetic susceptibility, a note about the proper choice of coordinates, entropy and information
26 27
lecture 14

Entropy and information, the grand canonical ensemble
28