assignment Homework
Consider the frictionless motion of a hockey puck of mass \(m\) on a perfectly circular bowl-shaped ice rink with radius \(a\). The central region of the bowl (\(r < 0.8a\)) is perfectly flat and the sides of the ice bowl smoothly rise to a height \(h\) at \(r = a\).
face Lecture
120 min.
Planck distribution blackbody radiation photon statistical mechanics
These notes from the fourth week of Thermal and Statistical Physics cover blackbody radiation and the Planck distribution. They include a number of small group activities.assignment Homework
Einstein condensation temperature Starting from the density of free particle orbitals per unit energy range \begin{align} \mathcal{D}(\varepsilon) = \frac{V}{4\pi^2}\left(\frac{2M}{\hbar^2}\right)^{\frac32}\varepsilon^{\frac12} \end{align} show that the lowest temperature at which the total number of atoms in excited states is equal to the total number of atoms is \begin{align} T_E &= \frac1{k_B} \frac{\hbar^2}{2M} \left( \frac{N}{V} \frac{4\pi^2}{\int_0^\infty\frac{\sqrt{\xi}}{e^\xi-1}d\xi} \right)^{\frac23} T_E &= \end{align} The infinite sum may be numerically evaluated to be 2.612. Note that the number derived by integrating over the density of states, since the density of states includes all the states except the ground state.
Note: This problem is solved in the text itself. I intend to discuss Bose-Einstein condensation in class, but will not derive this result.
assignment Homework
face Lecture
120 min.
ideal gas entropy canonical ensemble Boltzmann probability Helmholtz free energy statistical mechanics
These notes, from the third week of Thermal and Statistical Physics cover the canonical ensemble and Helmholtz free energy. They include a number of small group activities.face Lecture
120 min.
phase transformation Clausius-Clapeyron mean field theory thermodynamics
These lecture notes from the ninth week of Thermal and Statistical Physics cover phase transformations, the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, mean field theory and more. They include a number of small group activities.face Lecture
120 min.
Fermi level fermion boson Bose gas Bose-Einstein condensate ideal gas statistical mechanics phase transition
These lecture notes from week 7 of Thermal and Statistical Physics apply the grand canonical ensemble to fermion and bosons ideal gasses. They include a few small group activities.assignment Homework
assignment Homework
Find the differential of each of the following expressions; zap each of the following with \(d\):
\[f=3x-5z^2+2xy\]
\[g=\frac{c^{1/2}b}{a^2}\]
\[h=\sin^2(\omega t)\]
\[j=a^x\]