Class introduction

This class aims to provide a mathematical and theoretical framework for understanding behavior at or near equilibrium. Undergraduate thermodynamics often focuses on highly macroscopic, phenomenological descriptions of thermodynamics; you may have been told equations of state and thermodynamic principles, but you may not know the origin of these relationships or how they relate to molecular behavior. This class will seek to fill those gaps. We will first introduce statistical mechanics as a framework for relating the microscopic behavior of equilibrium systems to their macroscopic thermodynamic observables. We start with this unit because it will be new to most of you. However, statistical mechanics does depend on knowledge of some thermodynamics, so it may be challenging to those of you who have not had a thermodynamics class in a while. Similarly, we will require exercises in Python programming throughout the statistical mechanics unit in preparation for the second unit on molecular simulations. Programming again may be challenging for some of you with little computational background.

How to use this online book

This online book contains the notes I will be covering in class, curated over the past few iterations of this class by myself, Prof. Matt Gebbie, and Prof. Reid van Lehn. The format is meant to help you learn, with embedded links, suggested reading, and interactive elements. You will do well in this course if you read and understand the lecture notes, and use the suggested reading and resources to complete or augment this knowledge.