Lectures on Statistical Mechanics

Overview & Synopsis

Presented here is a transcription of the lecture notes from Professor Allan N. Kaufman s graduate statistical mechanics course Physics 212A and 212B at the University of California Berkeley from the 19721973 academic year. 212A addressed equilibrium statistical mechanics with topics fundamentals microcanonical and subcanonical ensembles, adiabatic law and action conservation, fluctuations, pressure and virial theorem, classical fluids and other systems equation of state, deviations from ideality, virial coefficients and van der Waals potential, canonical ensemble and partition function, quasistatic evolution, grandcanonical ensemble and partition function, chemical potential, simple model of a phase transition, quantum virial expansion, numerical simulation of equations of state and phase transition, chemical equilibrium systems with multiple species and chemical reactions, la.