Thermal and Statistical Physics

Catalog description

This course focuses on the basics of equilibrium thermodynamics and introduces the concepts of temperature, internal energy, and entropy using ideal gases and ideal paramagnets as models. The chemical potential is defined and the three thermodynamic potentials are discussed with use of Legendre transforms. It will also cover topics including the power of thermodynamics in gases and condensed matter, phase transitions, probability theory, and quantum statistics. 001114