Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics

Aim

The general aim of the statistical mechanics part of the course is that the student equipped with a quantum mechanical description of physical systems on a microscopic level and guided by the principle of entropy maximization - can derive equilibrium features of macroscopic systems that apply to thermodynamics, medicine, metallurgy, chemistry and semiconductor physics. This means that the student should be able to:

• construct idealized models for microscopic systems and calculate equilibrium features under different circumstance, i.e. given temperature, chemical potential or energy
• give an account of the reasoning and/or derivations in statistical mechanics and describe the connection between the basic concepts of the theory
• use the statistical mechanics results for problem solving in thermodynamics, medicine, metallurgy, chemistry and semiconductor physics.

Content

The statistical definitions of entropy, temperature, pressure and chemical potential constitutes the starting point. Other concepts that are presented is: multiplicity, ensemble average, specific heat, Boltzmann factor, partition function, thermodynamic identity, Helmholtz free energy, classical ideal gas, quantum concentration, Sackur-Tetrodes equation, Planck radiation law, Stefan-Boltzmanns law, emissivity, photon gas, greenhouse effect, heat shields, internal and external chemical potential, Gibbs factor, Gibbs sum (grand partition function), absolute activity, Langmuir adsorption isotherm, orbital, Pauli exclusion principle, Fermi-Dirac distribution, Bose-Einstein distribution, internal partition function, reversibility, free electron model, density of states, chemical potential as a normalizing constant, heat, work, heat engine, refrigerator, heat pump, Carnot process, adiabatic process, isothermal process, Gibbs free energy, law of mass action, phase transformation, Clausius-Clapeyron equation, van der Waals equation.