PHYSICS 301, THERMAL PHYSICS

16-Dec-2005: Schedule for reading and exam period:

• 12-Jan-2006, 7:30pm: Problem Session, 4th floor lounge,
• 16-Jan-2006, 5:00pm: Homework 11 Due in Department Office.
• 17-Jan-2006, 7:30pm: Review Session 1, 4th floor lounge.
• 18-Jan-2006, 7:30pm: Review Session 2, 4th floor lounge.
• 19-Jan-2006, 1:30pm: Final exam, Jadwin A07.

Review Session 1 will be a general review. Session 2 will discuss old exams. Here is last year's exam for study.

28-Oct-2005: The midterm and solutions.

25-Oct-2005: Cancelled or not planned: Office hours Wednesday Afternoon, October 26, 2005 (I have to participate in oral exams). Class Friday, October 28, 2005 (not a good time to start new material!). Problem session, Sunday, November 6, 2005 (no homework due until November 15!).

24-Oct-2005: 2003's midterm for study.

14-Oct-2005: Last year's midterm for study.

14-Oct-2005: The late homework policy/penalty has been made more explicit. See below.

14-Oct-2005: Amol will lead a review in the fourth floor lounge on Tuesday evening, October 25, at 7:30 pm. (Same place as the problem sessions.)

27-Sep-2005: Amol's office hours for Friday, 30-Sep-2005 are moved to Monday, 3-Oct-2005 in order not to conflict with Secretary Rice's address in Jadwin Gym.

Course Instructor: Ed Groth, Jadwin 264, x8-4361, groth@princeton.edu.

Office Hours: Most afternoons - give a call before walking across campus! Almost surely Wednesday afternoons, 2:00-4:00 pm.

Teaching Assistant: Amol Upadhye, Jadwin 434, x8-4355, aupadhye@princeton.edu.

Office Hours: Also most afternoons and almost surely Friday afternoons 3:00-5:00 pm.

Course Manager: Martin Kicinski, 208, x8-4408, kicinski@princeton.edu.

Lectures: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday, 10:00-10:50 am, Jadwin A06.

Problem Session: Sunday evenings, 7pm, Fourth Floor Lounge, Jadwin 403. Starting 25-Sep-2005.

Text: Kittel & Kroemer, Thermal Physics 2^nd ed., Freeman. (to be followed closely or loosely depending on the topic)

Others: Schroeder, An Introduction to Thermal Physics, Addison, Wesley, Longman. Similar to K&K, perhaps at a more introductory level.

Mandl, Statistical Physics, Wiley. Similar to K&K.

Reif, Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics, McGraw Hill. Also similar to K&K.

Feynman, Statistical Mechanics, a Set of Lectures, Addison Wesley. This is fairly advanced, but it's always worthwhile to see what Feynman has to say.

Callen, Thermodynamics, Wiley. A classic treatment of thermodynamics.

I've asked that all the above be placed on reserve at Fine Library.

Homework: Assigned Monday (I will try, but sometimes the assignment may not be ready until Wednesday!), due the next Tuesday in the department office (208) by 5pm, returned the next Monday. 40% of grade. Collaboration encouraged (but not copying!). Late homework may receive only half or none of the grade depending on how late it is and how it fits into the grading schedule!

Specifically: If for some reason you need to be late with a homework assignment, ask for permission in advance. Assignments turned in late without prior permission will receive half credit up to the next Monday morning (when it would normally be handed back). Assignments handed in later than that will receive no credit.

Midterm: In class, Wednesday, October 26, 15% of grade.

Final: 45% of grade.

We will start by following K&K and cover fundamentals of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, including temperature and entropy. We will cover the Boltzmann, Bose, and Fermi distributions; black body radiation; chemical potential; Gibbs free energy; and phase transitions. Then we'll consider some of the more advanced topics in K&K. A more detailed syllabus is in the table below.

The lecture notes and the homework assignments will be available for downloading. Note that I write the lecture notes mainly so I know what I'm going to say. I like to distribute them so you can follow along in lecture rather than having to worry about taking notes.

The notes and assignments are written in TeX and converted to postscript which is converted to PDF. You will need a to be able to view and print PDF for downloading to be useful! Acrobat Reader from Adobe is a free viewer for PDF format. The files are large because the fonts used by TeX are embedded in the files.

If you discover errors or typos, or just plain unclear passages, let me know at groth@princeton.edu.

You may occasionally get a file not found error if I've put in the link, but haven't installed to the actual file yet.