Correction to: Microstates, Entropy and Quanta
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Microstates, Entropy and Quanta An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics
Microstates, Entropy and Quanta
Don Koks
Microstates, Entropy and Quanta An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics
123
ISBN 978-3-030-02428-4 ISBN 978-3-030-02429-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02429-1
(eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960736 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover art: Central to statistical mechanics is the idea of counting the states accessible to a system. When these states exist within some continuous space, they cannot be counted. Instead, we “tile” the space into cells, with each cell defining a state, and then we count those cells. The ball on the front cover is a schematic of this tiling of the velocity space of a free particle that moves in three spatial dimensions. For real particles, the cells are so much smaller than the size of the ball that, to all intents and purposes, the ball is a smooth sphere. The number of cells can then easily be found from the sphere’s volume. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For my ancestors, and all those who have gone before.
Preface
Another book on introductory statistical mechanics? You might think that a century-old subject would have nothing left unsaid; but that is perhaps not the case. Unlike most other fields of physics, one can compare a dozen books on statistical mechanics and find a dozen different approaches to the discipline. At one extreme are authors who revel in arcane abstraction, but whose books go mostly unread. At the other extreme are very readable books that lack the mathematics to carry the reader very far beyond a set of physical assumptions. Most readers are looking for something in between; bu
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