Statistical Thermodynamics

Preface

This book was born out of my long‐time wish that chemistry and chemical engineering students should learn statistical thermodynamics using a book written for them. Many of the books on that subject were written for physics students, and the contents are not appropriate for those who deal with molecules. There are a few good books that nonphysics students can rely on, but they look old‐fashioned.

Many research papers in chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, biochemistry, and biophysics are written using the concepts of statistical thermodynamics, whether the authors of the papers are aware of that or not. The papers are mostly about molecules, and that is why molecular‐level description of quantities observed in experiments has a big presence in these areas of science. Statistical mechanics offers a right tool for that purpose.

Admittedly, the concepts of statistical mechanics are not easy to grasp. The fundamental hypotheses are philosophical, and they are translated into equations. By applying the tools of statistical mechanics to different thermodynamic systems and solving practice problems, you will be able to get a hang of the fundamental concepts. All the chapters, except for Chapter 1, have practice problems at the end. It is essential to solve them. You can find the answers at Wiley's web site: www.wiley.com/go/Teraoka_StatsThermodynamics.

One of the axioms in Confucius' famous book, the Analects, is shown below. Its translation is as follows: If ...