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NOTES ON THE FINAL
- During the final examination you'll be allowed to use your lecture
notes, homework, solutions and other "hand-written" notes.
No books are allowed.
- Calculators are allowed.
- Paper (examination books) will be provided.
The examination will have two parts:
1. Short quiz-type problems dealing with the following topics:
- Ensemble theory
- Thermodynamics
- Phase equilibrium and phase transitions (including Ising and mean-field
models)
2. The core of the examination will be problems dealing with quantum
statistical systems (Fermi-Dirac, Bose-Einstein, and Maxwell-Boltzmann).
- Tue, April 30, 2002: Solutions
to Midterm are uploaded to the Assignments
section. I will upload solutions to the Homework #5 tomorrow.
- Tue, April 30, 2002:Solutions for the fourth
homework uploaded to the Assignments
section.
- Tue, April 23, 2002: Notes
on broken symmetry, Landau theory, etc. uploaded to the Resources
section.
- Wed, April 17, 2002: Homework #5 (last) uploaded to the Assignments
section. Due date: April, 25. Topic:"Ising
model of phase transitions".
- Thu, April 4, 2002: Homework #4 uploaded to the Assignments
section. Due date: April, 16. Topic:
"Applications of Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics".
- Tue, April 2, 2002: Midterm
uploaded to the Assignments
section.
- Tue, April 2, 2002: Solutions for the second
homework uploaded to the Assignments
section.
- Thu, March 28, 2002: Handout "Quatum
Statistics of Non-Interacting ... " updated to include the
material of the last two lectures. Find it in the Resources
section.
- Tue, March 26, 2002: Solutions for the
first homework uploaded to the Assignments
section.
- Thu, March 21, 2002: Project
guidelines, including suggested topics, uploaded to the Assignments
section. If you decide to do a project, send
me an email stating the topic and name(s) of author(s) for approval.
Please, get an approval before April 5, 2002.
- Wed, March 20, 2002: Homework #3 uploaded to the Assignments
section. Due date: April 2. Topic: "Quantum
Statistical Mechanics. Part I". Advice:
do not procrastinate with this one!
- Tue, March 19, 2002: Handout "Quatum
Statistics of Non-Interacting ... " added to the Resources
section. The document wil be updated as we develop the subject in
class.
- Mon, March 4, 2002: Homework #2 uploaded to the Assignments
section. Due date: March, 19. Topic:
"Thermodynamics".
- Tue, February 26, 2002: Example
1 added to the Assignments section
to help with homework #1.
- Thu, February 14, 2002: Two article added to the
SM Reference file; note on the
anomalous negative sign in the partials is added to the Resources
section.
-
Mon, February 11, 2002: Homework #1 uploaded
to the Assignments section. Due
date: Feb. 26. This is a large one; start working on it ASAP.
-
Fri, February 1, 2002: New section Resources
is added. The section contains links to this course lecture notes,
supplement texts, and other on-line resources.
-
Tue, January 15, 2002: Policies
section upgraded. Attendance policies added. Grading policies
upgraded.
- Tue, January 15, 2002: Syllabus section
added.
The
objective of the course is to help you learn how to apply statistical
ideas to the solution of real physical problems. Before you can
do so, you will have to learn to recognize when statistical ideas
will be useful, what the most promising approach is likely to be,
and what methods are available to solve the problem. All are probably
best learned by seeing how statistical ideas have been used in past
research. This will be the general theme of the course. The lectures
will develop the methods of statistical mechanics systematically,
and illustrate their application with numerous examples and applications
to real problems.
The homework will
continue this theme, with a large fraction of the problems dealing
with real, rather than practice, problems, many quite important
in the development of statistical mechanics or in current research,
as the names attached to the problems will indicate.
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Curriculum
