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. Also please
contact one of us to make sure that you have the latest versions of the chapters. If you would like to be automatically notified each time a chapter or applet is updated, please let us know. Solutions to some of the problems are available to instructors upon request. The
notes were written for an undergraduate and graduate class and
are available as part of the STP project.
The notes will be published by Princeton University Press in 2009. The notes will remain freely available online after the book is published. One goal of this project is to reduce the cost of textbooks and to make the material as readily available as possible.
We suggest that you do not print a chapter until you actually need it, because we expect to update the chapters during the semester.
Please send us your comments and suggestions for improving the text.
Many of the problems in Chapters 1 and 3-6 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.
- Contents. Updated 16 January 2008.
- Chapter 1, "From Classical Mechanics to
Statistical Mechanics," pages 1-30. Updated 4 February 2008. older version.
- Chapter 2, "Thermodynamic Concepts and
Processes," pages 30-101. Updated 18 February 2008. older versions.
- Chapter 3, "Concepts of Probability,"
pages 102-167. Updated 1 May 2008. older versions.
- Chapter 4, "The Methodology of
Statistical Mechanics," pages 168-222. Updated 3 April 2008. older versions
- Chapter 5, "Magnetic Systems," pages 224-274. Updated 5 March 2008. older versions
- Chapter 6, "Noninteracting Particle Systems," pages 275-335. Updated 18 March 2008. Update coming soon.
- Chapter 7, "Thermodynamic Relations and
Processes," pages 330-351. Updated 16 January 2008. This chapter is still very much in draft form and will be extensively rewritten during the next month.
The following chapters are more advanced.
- Chapter 8, "Theories of Gases and Liquids," pages 352-397. Updated 26 November 2007. This chapter is still incomplete, but an update is coming soon.
- Chapter 9, "Critical Phenomena and the Renormalization Group," pages 410-447. Updated 24 April 2008.
- New chapters are planned on non-thermal statistical processes and time-dependent phenomena.
- Appendix, pages 449-457. Updated 17 April 2008.
- index. Updated 16 January 2008. The index is still incomplete and will be updated frequently during the next several months.
- Introduction to Many-Body Perturbation Theory, 10 pages. Updated 2 January 2006. It is unlikely that this chapter will be included in the published text.
Acknowledgements
- Louis Colonna-Romano has generated the better figures and will redraw all the figures before the book is published.
- William Klein (Boston University) for adopting our notes as his primary text and pointing out ambiguous and misleading statements.
- Anne Cox and her student Chris Bauer (Eckerd College) for many comments and corrections for Chapters 2 and 3.
- Dr. Jan Ryckebusch (Ghent University) for correcting my ypos and errors in Chapter 5.
- Oscar R. Enriquez for pointing out several typos in Chapter 1.
- Rob Kooijman, for pointing the flaws in a prior introduction to the concept of probability in Chapter 3. He is not responsible for the present version and any remaining flaws.
- Chris Sataline, for pointing out many typos and unclear passages in Chapters 3 and 4.
- Dr. Nedialko M. Nedeltchev, for pointing out several typos in Chapter 7.
- Andy Coniglio, Matus Medo, Pouria Pedram, and Oruganti Shanker, for pointing mistakes in Chpter 9.
- Milton Cole and Beate Schmittman for helpful suggestions.
Updated 1 May 2008.