Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Statistical and Thermal Physics

Eight years ago I taught Rice's undergraduate Statistical and Thermal Physics course, and now after teaching the honors intro physics class for a while, I'm returning to it.   I posted about the course here, and I still feel the same - the subject matter is intellectually very deep, and it's the third example in the undergraduate curriculum (after electricity&magnetism and quantum mechanics) where students really need to pick up a different way of thinking about the world, a formalism that can seem far removed from their daily experience.

One aspect of the course, the classical thermodynamic potentials and how one goes back and forth between them, nearly always comes across as obscure and quasi-magical the first (or second) time students are exposed to it.  Since the last time I taught the course, a nice expository article about why the math works has appeared in the American Journal of Physics (arxiv version).  

Any readers have insights/suggestions on other nice, recent pedagogical resources for statistical and thermal physics?  

12 comments:

Cesar Uliana said...

I like John Baez's take on the relationship between classical mechanics and thermodynamics (https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/classical-mechanics-versus-thermodynamics-part-1/), not really something knew but well written and a nice complementary source for the article you mentioned

Douglas Natelson said...

Cesar, thanks for pointing me to that. Baez is always fun to read, and that was no exception (though mathjax seems to be broken in some of the comments, since the equation rendering fails, at least on my browser).

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

One of my favorite science 'lay person' books is "Life's Ratchet" by Peter Hoffman. The subject matter doesn't easily fit into the standard undergrad stat mech curriculum. However, I value the book for its excellent pedagogy regarding some very fundamental and deep issues relating to the foundational issues of stat mech - particularly, the meaning of equilibrium, non-equilibrium, the underlying basis for the arrow of time, and several other extremely deep and subtle issues. Personally, I believe that the way we currently present stat mech go undergrads is very outdated, and in need of a serious overhaul that accounts for the very recent advances in the subject, especially as pertaining to nonequilibrium and nanoscale systems. The problem is that I don't know if the physics community has reached a consensus agreement on the best way to integrate this into the curriculum, so in the absence of any immediate truly 'modern' textbook at undergrad level, I would say Hoffman's book is a good start/supplement.

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

Wow I just realized I had lots of run-on sentences and redundancy in that last comment. Sorry about that!

Douglas Natelson said...

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll pick up a copy of that. Tangentially related, I enjoyed this one quite a bit: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Itself-Exploring-Realm-Living/dp/0195125002

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

Thanks!

DanM said...

I'm teaching Griffiths (intro to EM) for the first time this fall, and could also use some pointers on how to make the students not loathe me. I fear, however, that the 'upside down triangle' will seal my fate. It's not clear to me how many of the ~150 registrants have taken any vector calculus by now.

Jason Hafner said...

Hey DanM, I used to do a two-lecture crash course in vector calc for PHYS201 just for that reason. But they didn't have to really be able to use it extensively, just understand the derivatives.

Nablaste

Douglas Natelson said...

DanM, you could take a look at Purcell's book, where there is a really good summary for students of all the basic vector calc. What year are your students that they haven't seen div, grad, and curl?

tcmJOE said...

Are you teaching out of Kittell again?

Douglas Natelson said...

tcmJOE, I've never taught this class out of Kittel. I'm using Reif as a primary text, and supplementing with lots of other stuff.

tcmJOE said...

Whoops, I was confused there...

I'm a big fan of Goodstein's "States of Matter". Plus, as a Dover book, super-cheap.