Professor: Ken Intriligator
5234 Mayer Hall
Office Hours: Thursday 2:30-3:30pm		 TA: Mac Lee
Office: TBD
Office Hours: TBD,
or by appointment.

You can turn in HW 8 as late as Friday afternoon (in that case, give it to Mac in discussion session or put it under my office door MH5234).

Text: Concepts in Thermal Physics by Blundell and Blundell .

Catalog Description:Integrated treatment of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics; statistical treatment of entropy, review of elementary probability theory, canonical distribution, partition function, free energy, phase equilibrium, introduction to ideal quantum gases. Prerequisites: Physics 130A.

Course Times: Lecture: TTh 11:00-12:20, MYR-A 2702. Discussion: Friday 12:00-12:50pm MYR-A 2702.

Homework: Around 8 problem sets, with about a week to do each. Due in class, at 11:00am (or dropped off earlier). Late HW sets will have points deducted.

Midterm: Will be Feb. 12, during the lecture time.

Final: Thursday, March 21, 11:30-2:30. No late or early finals, check your schedule!

Grading: Homework=20%, Midterm=30%, Final=50%.

Fun / helpful links: Feynman Lectures on Physics (see especially Vol. 1, chapters 38-46 for this class).        Arrow of time      Maxwell's demon      Maxwell      Boltzmann      Gibbs

date Topics (and link to lecture notes) Homework
1/8 Introduction, probability.   HW1(Due 1/15)           
1/10 Temperature and configurations. Microcanonical vs canonical.             
1/15 Microcanonical vs canonical, cont. MB distribution, derive ideal gas law  HW 2 (Due 1/24)           
1/17 More kinetic theory. First law: work and PV diagrams            
1/22 Heat capacities, gamma, f, PV diags cont.   HW 3 (due 1/29)           
1/24 Second law and engine efficiency.             
1/29 Entropy   HW 4 (due 2/5 and 2/7)           
1/31 Entropy, cont.             
2/5 Entropy, cont.             
2/7 U, H, F, G, and A.   16.1, 16.2 (not turned in)           
2/12 Midterm   HW 5 (due 2/19)          
2/14 Availability (cont), the 3rd law, equipartition            
2/19 The partition function  HW 6 (due 2/26)          
2/21 The partition function, cont.             
2/26 Indistinguishable particles Z.   HW 7 (due 3/7)          
2/28 Indistinguishable particles in microcanonical. Chemical potential.             
3/5 Grand canonical cont, BE and FD distributions            
3/7 BE and FD cont, photons in a box            HW 8 (due 3/15)
3/12 photons in a box cont., relativistic ideal gas            
3/14 relativistic gas cont, Einstein & Debye models for C(T) of solids, phase boundaries