Physics 621 Home Page

Statistical Physics -- Fall 2011

Welcome to the Physics 621 home page! Please check this page regularly.

Recent changes to this page:

• Sept 21 2011 --- Welcome to the first week of class!

Contents

• Lecture notes
• Quizzes
• Homework
  
• Exams
• Feedback
• Course information

Lecture notes

Material from the lectures that is not included in Schroeder's Introduction to Thermal Physics will be posted here.

• Monday, Sept 26: Trapped atoms - equipartition (pdf)
• Monday, Oct 17: Trapped atoms - entropy (pdf)
• Friday, Oct 28: Cooling gases (pdf)
• Tuesday, Nov 9: Weiss equation of state for ferromagnet (pdf)
• Tuesday, Nov 30: Evaporative cooling of trapped gas (pdf)

Quizzes

The subject of the quiz will be posted here at least 12 hours before Tuesday's class.

• Tuesday, Oct 4: Use the Equipartition Theorem to determine the total energy of various systems of atoms or molecules at temperature T. (pdf)
• Tuesday, Oct 11: Given a macrostate of a system that is specified by the total energy U, identify the corresponding microstates. (pdf)
• Tuesday, Oct 18: Given the multiplicity of a system as a function of the total energy U, calculate the entropy in the thermodynamic limit. (pdf)
• Wednesday, Nov 2: Given a thermodynamic relation (such as dU = TdS - PdV), use it to express thermodynamic variables (such as T or P) in terms of derivatives of other thermodynamic variables (such as S or V or U). (pdf)

Homework

Problem numbers are from Schroeder's Introduction to Thermal Physics.

Exams

• solutions to 1st midterms from previous years: 2009 (pdf), 2010 (pdf)
• 1st Midterm: Friday Oct 21, 11:30am, Derby Hall 80, solutions (pdf)
• solutions to 2nd midterm from previous year: 2010 (pdf)
• solutions to final exam from previous year: 2009 (pdf)
• 2nd Midterm: Friday, Nov 18, 11:30am, Derby Hall 80, solutions (pdf)
• Final: Thursday Dec 8, 11:30am, Derby Hall 80

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Feedback

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Send email to Prof. Braaten at braaten(AT)mps.ohio-state.edu

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