PHY 306 Thermodynamics, Kinetic Theory, and Statistical Mechanics

A study of the laws that govern physical systems in
thermal equilibrium. In the first part, the concepts of
temperature, internal energy, and entropy are analyzed
and the first and second laws of thermodynamics
a re used to connect various properties that are independent
of the microscopic details of the system. The
second part is devoted to a microscopic study of a system
in thermal equilibrium, from the kinetic theory of
gases to statistical mechanics and the relation
between entropy and probability, with application to
simple examples in classical and quantum statistics.
Prerequisites: PHY 251 and PHY 300
3 credits