Current Classes
Previous Classes
PHY340 - THERMAL PHYSICS (fall 2000)
- Textbook: "Thermal Physics" by Charles Kittel and Herbert Kroemer, Second Edition W.H. Freeman and Company, NY (1980)
- Syllabus: The course will cover most of the
material in chapters 1 through 11 of the textbook, plus additional
material on thermodynamics. Topics include:
- The three laws of thermodynamics
- Statistical definition and interpretation of entropy
- Boltzmann distribution and Helmholtz free energy
- Other free energies: Gibbs, enthalpy, ...; Legendre transforms
- Chemical potential and Gibbs distribution
- Ideal gas (classical)
- Noninteracting quantum gas: Fermi and Bose statistics
- Heat and work
- Phase transitions
- Binary mixtures
- Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
PHY 213 - ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM II ('99)
Topics include:
- Maxwell's equations
- Poynting's theorem
- potentials
- the wave equation
- waves in vacuum and in materials
- transmission and reflection at boundaries
- guided waves
- dispersion
- electromagnetic field of moving charges
- radiation
- Lorentz invariance and other symmetries of Maxwell's equations
PHY 340 - THERMAL PHYSICS ('fall '99)
Basic principles of thermodynamics, kinetic theory, and statistical mechanics, with emphasis on applications to classical and quantum mechanical physical systems. Prerequisites: Phy 13 or 21, and Math 23, 32 or 52.