This page contains announcements for the course (e.g. reading assignments changes in homework assignments,
answers to FAQs, scheduling changes).
6-24-09
Welcome to 544! This week, there will be a math review on Friday. It's optional, but unless you got 90%+ on the math quiz, I recommend you come to the math reviews in the first few weeks.
8-25-09
Reading for math review: all reading is in appendix A of the notes. Concentrate on sections A1.1-A1.4, A2, A3.4-A3.6, A7, A9, A11 and A12. Other sections may be useful for your quantum class, but we don't need them for Stat Mech this year.
8-26-09
Reading on classical mechanics: "Notes 2" contains background material on classical mechanics,
including Hamilton's equations and computing an observable A(x,p,t) using Poisson brackets.
9-4-09
Math reading: do some of the examples in Appendix A; as of today, you should be able to do problems 3, 4a, 4b, 5, 7, and 8. You probably can also do 1 & 2 using det(AB)=det(A)*det(B), det(A^-1)=1/det(A) etc., although I'll be talking about determinants next Friday. The only determinant you need is:
|a b|
|c d| = a*d - c*b
Reading on postulates: Check out Callen's chapter on potulates of thermo, or look at Chandler's section 1.3 (variational form of 2nd law), which is how my P2 (thermo) defines it.
In the lecture notes, Ch. 1 covers the types of definitions summarized in P0 (thermo), and Chapter 2 covers the postulates P1-P3
9-11-09
In Chandler, p. 9-15 discuss most of the material for Monday and part of Wednedsay (lectures Thermo 1 and 2 on the 14th and 16th of September). p. 16-20 discuss the Legendre transform, which you saw on the homework and in the math notes, and which I will go over again in lecture. This is used to derive enthalphy and Gibbs free energy from the energy U. By Friday we should finish most of the material covered in Chandler's first chapter.
9-22-09
Besides the notes, Chapters 4-6, Callen's book nicely covers Legendre transforms, Maxwell's relations, and Jacobians, plus their uses. He draws the "thermodynamic square." I find it easier to think of what variables the potential v(x,y) has, write V = Xdx+Ydy, and then equate dX/dy = dY/dx.
10-06-09
Read notes chapter 7; we'll be covering this up to Friday this week. Next week we'll briefly discuss phase transitions, a topic we'll revisit when we do statistical mechanics.
11-02-09
To help you work with quantum notation, I have posted two sheets summarizing equivalent quantities in classical and quantum mechanics, as well as wavefunction-vector-Dirac notation compared one-on-one. I also posted my lecture notes on density matrices, which are optional reading. We won't go into it as deeply, but I will discuss the classical density and quantum density matrix again in a few lectures, and skimming this chapter will help.
August 2009