PHY 371 - Thermal Physics, 4 credit hours

Prerequisite(s): PHY 131, PHY 132 or PHY 145L, PHY 146L, one year of calculus, or instructor’s permission
A one-semester lecture course investigating the basic principles and ideas of thermodynamics and statistical mechanic including entropy, enthalpy, temperature, and the thermodynamic potentials. The course explores how traditional thermodynamics is best understood by looking at its underlying statistical roots as found in the Boltzmann and Gibbs distributions. If needed, the course may include a brief review of introductory topics. The course is then expected to quickly move on to the investigation of such advanced topics as the Maxwell relations, Bose and Fermi statistics, Debye and Einstein solids, and the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Spreadsheets are used to solve appropriate problems.