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- Introduction
- What is a mole?
- The thermodynamic limit
- The ideal gas
- Combinatorial problems
- Plan of the book
- Exercises
- Heat
- A definition of heat
- Heat capacity
- Exercises
- Probability
- Discrete probability distributions
- Continuous probability distributions
- Linear transformation
- Variance
- Linear transformation and the variance
- Independent variables
- Binomial distribution
- Exercises
- Temperature and the Boltzmann Factor
- Thermal equilibrium
- Thermometers
- The microstates and macrostates
- A statistical definition of temperature
- Ensembles
- Canonical ensemble
- Applications of the Boltzmann distribution
- The Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution
- The velocity distribution
- The speed distribution
- Experimental justification
- Pressure
- Molecular effusion
- The mean free path and collisions
- Transport properties in gases
- The thermal diffusion equation
- Derivation of the thermal diffusion equation
- The one-dimensional thermal diffusion equation
- The steady state
- The thermal diffusion equation for a sphere
- Newton’s law of cooling
- The Prandtl number
- Sources of heat
- Particle diffusion
- Exercises
- Energy
- Isothermal and adiabatic processes
- Heat Engines and the Second law
- Entropy
- Information Theory
- Thermodynamic potentials
- Rods, Bubbles and magnets
- The Third law
- Equipartition of Energy
- The partition function
- Statistical mechanics of an Ideal Gas
- The chemical Potential
- Photons
- Phonons
- Relativistic gases
- Cooling real gas
- Phase transitions
- Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac Distributions
- Quantum gases and condensates
- Sound waves
- Shock waves
- Brownian motion and fluctuations
- Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics
- Stars
- Compact objects
- Earth’s Atmosphere
- A Fundamental constants
- B Useful formulae
- C Useful Mathematics
- D The electromagnetic spectrum
- E Some Thermodynamic Definition
- F Thermodynamic expansion formulae
- G Reduced mass