ASTR 5110 Fall 2023 Homepage

Statistical Mechanics Summary

What? Why?
  1. Ideal gas
  2. Conserved quantities (Energy, ...) and thermodynamic variables (\({-1 / kT}\), ...)
  3. Microscopic reversibility
  4. When does TE hold?
  5. Entropy
  6. Indistinguishability (Gibbs paradox)
  7. (Grand) partition function
  8. Occupation number (Mathematica notebook)
  9. Gravity has negative specific heat, is thermodynamically unstable

Updated 2023 Sep 25