This is a modern introduction to the topic of statistical mechanics, that is, the way in which the interactions between sufficiently large sets of molecules give rise to experimentally observable properties of a system. Click here for the syllabus.
Lecture Notes
- Lecture 1 - Intro to Stat Mech and Partition Functions (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 2 - Intro to Microcanonical Ensemble (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 3 - Microcanonical Ensemble Continued, and Entropy (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 4 - Thermodynamics Review (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 5 - Ideal Gas (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 6 - Microcanonical to canonical (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 7 - Heat capacity and intro to sampling (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 8 - Monte Carlo (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 9 - Classical Mechanics to MD (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 10 - Canonical Sampling (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 11 - Radial distribution functions (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 12 - Structure factor and reversible work theorem (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 13 - Energy and pressure from g(r), and virial expansion (Full notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 14 - Pre-midterm review (Live notes)
- Lecture 15 - Van der Waal's theory (Full Notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 16, 17, 18 - Phase transitions (Full Notes)
- Lecture 16 - Phase transitions, Pt. 1 (Live notes)
- Lecture 17 - Phase transitions, Pt. 2 (Live notes)
- Lecture 18 - Phase transitions, Pt. 3 (Live notes)
- Lecture 19 - Renormalization and intro to non-equilibrium (Full Notes) (Live notes)
- Lecture 20, 21 - Langevin dynamics and diffusion(Full Notes)
- Lecture 20 - Langevin dynamics (Live notes)
- Lecture 21 - Diffusion and Stokes-Einstein relation (Live notes)
- Lecture 22 - Intro to kinetics (Full Notes) (Live notes)
Assignments
- Week 1 - Intro to Python: Complete the interactive tutorial at this link.
- Week 2 - Homework 1 (Gaussian integrals, partition functions)
- >>>Homework 1 Solutions
- Week 4 - Homework 2 (Microcanonical ensemble, ideal gas)
- >>>Homework 2 Solutions
- Week 6 - Homework 3 (Canonical Ensemble)
- >>>Homework 3 Solutions
- Week 8 - Homework 4 (Microcanonical and canonical practice)
- >>>Homework 4 Solutions
- Week 9/10 - Midterm and solutions (canonical and microcanonical ensemble)
- Week 11 - Computational homework 1 - radial distribution functions
- >>>Computational Homework 1 Solutions
- Week 12 - Computational homework 2 - 1d ising model
- >>>Computational Homework 2 Solutions
- Week 14 - Computational homework 3 - MD introduction
- >>>Computational Homework 3 Solutions