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Jan 8

Are you keeping warm? Wondering about climate change and thermal physics? Well, you better start wondering. Classes begin bright and early on Monday – 8:00 AM! I expect to see everyone there.

I hope you have gotten bored over the break and have started reading some thermodynamics. In particular, get your hands on Fermi’s little book. The main text (Gould and Tobochnik) can be purchased or you can access the online notes. Also, I put some links up to some intro physics lectures on thermal physics. I will expect you to watch some of these during the first week, or so of classes. This will make up for us not meeting next Friday. Also, the following Monday is MLK Day and there are no classes that day either.

Dec 4

You are currently registered for PHY 455, Thermal Physics. I hope this will be a fun class. I will be posting information about the course online at http://people.uncw.edu/hermanr/phy455/. Unfortunately, there is nothing there yet! I hope to get the some information posted by the time classes begin. In this class we will be looking into some classical thermodynamics, kinetic theory, and statistical mechanics.

There are a variety of approaches that can be taken and there are many books out there that you can reference.  I did chose a couple of books for the bookstore. Some are listed as optional and some required. For example, I thought you might enjoy some classic Dover books. In particular, Fermi’s Thermodynamics, http://www.amazon.com/Thermodynamics-Dover-Books-Physics-Enrico/dp/048660361X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1386168056&sr=1-1. I know you probably like to have one main text, so I chose Statistical and Thermal Physics: With Computer Applications, by Harvey Gould & Jan Tobochnik. One thing that is nice about this book is that you can buy the book or use the online chapters at http://stp.clarku.edu/notes/. Chapter 1 is an overview of micro/macro  material, but Chapter 2 on Thermodynamics will probably be where we will spend the first few weeks. Also, I would encourage you to read the Thermal physics chapters in your Physics I book during the first couple of weeks of the course. I know that most of you did not cover this in Physics I and this will help with understanding some of the basic classical thermal physics that you will be learning the first part of the class.

Another book that interested me, but I might only refer to is at http://pages.physics.cornell.edu/~sethna/StatMech/. We’ll see how the course goes. This book gives examples showing that some of the material in the course is useful in understanding some other disciplines and examples.  

That should keep you busy over break. I hope we find some interesting topics to explore as we move from little knowledge of thermal physics to … wherever our studies take us.

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