Type in PS 9 corrected

Pls use the updated version on web.

Class on 10/28 canceled

Due to unexpected situation, the class today is canceled. We will make it up someway later.

Homework 7 which was due today is now due Monday 11/2.

10/12-10/21 Chap 4

We covered Chap 4 of KK. On 10/21 TA showed a movie lecture of Prof. George Smoot (Nobel prize winning physicist for work on modern experimental cosmology) and went over 2 problems, one of which touched upon phonons in solids. Midterm exam is 10/26 in class and covers Chap 1-4.

09/21-10/07

We covered Chap 3 of KK in slow pace.
At the lecture on 10/07, we also discussed isothermal and isentropic (adiabatic) processes for ideal gases (you can read page 171-175 in KK).

Lectures 4-7

Lecture 4 (09/02): we begin to discuss entropy, temperature and thermal equilibrium both from abstract perspective and demonstrated in the case of spin system (Chap 2)

Lecture 5 (09/09) --- TA showed the movie "absolute zero"

Lecture 6 (09/14) --- we continued to discuss entropy, energy, temperature and thermal equilibrium, particularly what happens when bringing 2 spin systems together

Lecture 7 (09/16) ---- we finished Chap 2 with a discussion of laws of thermodynamics and a few other concepts such as ensemble and "equilibrium average".

Lecture 3 on 08/31/09

We discussed:
Sterling approximation for factorials and approximation (analytic) for multiplicity of binomial (spin) problem for large N and s much less than N;
concepts of mean, variance, and fractional fluctuation and what they are for binomial spin problem.

We almost finished Chap 1 of KK.

Correction to HWK2

Note a typo in probem 2 --- "s" should be "2s" and the "15000" should be deleted (i.e, "2s=0, 1000, 5000, 10000."). Thanks to Brendon Rose for catching this.