Statistical Mechanics (MP461)    (Autumn 2012)


There will be a revision tutorial for this course on Monday January 7, 2013, at 14:30.
Place: the Mathematical Physics Computer Lab in the Science Building, (number 17 on this Map of the North Campus)

The exam is on Tuesday January 8, 12:30h in the Main Sports Hall


Note: Details on the assignments and on the material covered appear on the Weekly Schedule.


Instructor


Class meets


Course content

We will roughly cover the module content posted on the mathematical physics department's webpage.
A more accurate Weekly Schedule will appear gradually as the course evolves.


Text

We will use the following book:

# Title:An Introduction to Thermal Physics
# Author: Daniel V. Schroeder.

You will need this book so please buy it.

This comes in hardcover or as a paperback "international edition" (I have the paperback, but I expect they are identical as far as the content is concerned):

# Hardcover: 422 pages
# Publisher: Addison Wesley; US ed edition (August 28, 1999)
# ISBN-10: 0201380277
# ISBN-13: 978-0201380279

# Paperback: 422 pages
# Publisher: Pearson Education; 1st International edition edition (2 Sep 2004)
# Language English
# ISBN-10: 0321277791
# ISBN-13: 978-0321277794

This book also has its own webpage, maintained by the author. The bookshop has a number of copies in stock for you, but if they run out, it also sells online for about 40 euro.


Exam and Continuous Assessment

There will be a one and a half hour written examination. It counts for 80% of the mark. Continuous Assessment (that is, hand-in exercises), makes up the remaining 20%.
If the mark for continuous assessment is lower than the exam mark, then the exam counts for 100%

Homework

As with all courses in theoretical physics, you can only really learn the subject by practising it yourself. (Also, you could substitute "enjoy" for learn in the previous sentence and it would still be true). To aid this process, there will be a number of assignments, about one per two weeks. You can hand in your solutions, and in that case they will be marked and the results will count for 20% of the final mark if they are better than the exam result. If the exam mark is better than the continuous assessment mark, then the exam mark is the final mark (so please hand in solutions, it can never hurt and it will almost certainly help).

Please make sure your assignments show some cohesion as well as your name and student number. I encourage you to work on the homework in small groups; it is important to learn to communicate about the subject. However, please make sure you do fully understand the solutions to the problems and please write them up from scratch, in your own words. For this week's homework, see the Weekly Schedule


Old exam papers

Exam papers from previous years can be found here.

To give you the opportunity to test yourself on an exam, I am making the Spring 2010 exam available with solutions.
The exam is here.
A set of solutions to this exam is here.

Feedback

If you have questions, comments or suggestions for the lectures and the webpage (maybe you don't like green :)), then please send me an email. I can't promise to make everybody happy, but I will try.