Draft chapters of Thermal and Statistical Physics
All chapters are copyrighted by Harvey Gould and Jan Tobochnik. They are not to be copied
or distributed without contacting one of the authors. Solutions to many of the problems are available to instructors upon request. The
notes are available as part of the STP project.
The notes will be published by Princeton University Press in 2010. The notes will remain freely available online after the book is published, although their format will differ from the published version. One goal of this project is to reduce the cost of textbooks and to make the material as readily available as possible.
Further down the pipeline are online chapters on Dynamics and Statistical Physics.
Please send us your comments and suggestions for improving the text.
Many of the problems in Chapters 1 and 3-9 make use of simulations.
The pdf files are hyperlinked, although not all the links work with all operating systems and software used to read the pdf files.
The material at this site is also comPADRE, an educational resource collection. Copies of previous versions of the chapters are available there.
- Table of Contents, 7 pages. Updated 1 June 2009.
- Preface, 6 pages. Updated 31 May 2009.
- Chapter 1, "From Microscopic to Macroscopic
Behavior," pages 1-30. Updated 31 May 2009.
- Chapter 2, "Thermodynamic Concepts and
Processes," pages 29-105. Updated 31 May 2009.
- Chapter 3, "Concepts of Probability,"
pages 106-172. Updated 23 June 2009.
- Chapter 4, "The Methodology of
Statistical Mechanics," pages 173-230. Updated 31 May 2009.
- Chapter 5, "Magnetic Systems," pages 231-293. Updated 28 May 2009.
- Chapter 6, "Many Particle Systems," pages 293-355. Updated 24 May 2009.
- Chapter 7, "The Chemical Potential and Phase
Equilibria," pages 356-387. Updated 20 May 2009.
The following chapters are more advanced.
- Chapter 8, "Theories of Gases and Liquids," pages 388-434. Updated 26 May 2009.
- Chapter 9, "Critical Phenomena and the Renormalization Group," pages 435-467. Updated 24 May 2009.
- New chapters are planned on non-thermal statistical processes and time-dependent phenomena.
- Appendix A, pages 468-476. Updated 1 June 2009.
- Problem Listing. Updated 27 May 2009.
- Index, pages 477-484. Updated 26 May 2009.
- Introduction to Many-Body Perturbation Theory, 10 pages. Updated 2 January 2006. This chapter will not be included in the published text.
Updated 23 June 2009.