Statistical Mechanics (MP461)    (Spring 2012)

The lecture on Tuesday, February 7, is cancelled.
Details on a replacement lecture to be announced.

The first tutorial will be on Tuesday, February 14, 11am in Hall B in the Arts building

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. It sells online for about 40 euro, but I will ask the bookshop to get copies for you.


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

There will be a number of assignments to hand in (the frequency will be about one per two weeks). These will be marked and the results will count for 20% of the final mark.

Please make sure your homework shows 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

Some exam papers from previous years can be found 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.