PHYS 224, Autumn 2008
Thermal Physics

Resources

Instructor: David Cobden
Email: cobden@u.washington.edu

Office: B432 Physics-Astronomy Building

Equations to remember for 224
UW Lecture demos

Books:
Thermal Physics - Daniel V. Schroeder (Addison-Wesley 1999)  Required
Statistic Physics - Course of Theoretical Physics Vol. 5 - E.M. Lifshitz and L.D Landau (Butterworth-Heinemann 1984)
Some Processes are Irreversible, Unit T
- Thomas A. Moore (McGraw-Hill 2002)
Flying Circus of Physics
- Jearl Walker (Wiley 2006)

Wikipedia articles:   temperature  pressure   heat   thermodynamics  statistical mechanics  Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics 
ideal gas   van der Waals equation    phase transition    entropy   Gibbs ensemble    Legendre transforms   Gibbs free energy

Wolfram Reseach we resource - thermodynamics
Hyperphysics - thermodynamics

Other thermal physics/statistical mechanics web sites
224 as taught by David Thouless and Marcel den Nijs (UW)
Advanced stat mech by Victor Batista (Yale)

Temperature, thermal equilibrium - essay on temperature.

Ideal gas equation - Ideal gas equation - plot it

Kinetic theory of gases and distribution functions
2-D java Pressure Model with no collisions and equal speeds
2-D java model with collisions and distribution of velocities
Flowchart of kinetic theory and related theories, including mean free path
Derivation of Maxwell velocity distribution
Charged particles in a box
Atmosphere model and Boltzmann distribution
Kinetic theory simulation fixed volume with distribution of velocities and gravity
Kinetic theory - molecules in a balloon; 
1-D one-atom gas pressure model
Lies, damn lies, and statistics: histogram bin sizes

Diffusion
Brownian Motion java model of a single particle
Brownian diffusion of particles into a fluid

Heat and the First Law
Hyperphysics
Beer and ice cream diet - where's the catch?
Phase diagram of water
Phase transition temperatures
Ideal gas equation - play with isobaric, isochoric, isothermal and adiabatic changes
Stop Nuclear Disaster

Heat flow
Black Body Radiation
Leidenfrost effect (How I can pour liquid nitrogen over my hand without getting burnt) 

Engines
Carnot Cycle, Another Carnot Engine
Otto Cycle, Another Otto Cycle
Diesel Cycle
Stirling CycleOperation of the Stirling engine
Animations of historic pumps, engines, etc

Second Law
Bouncing ball
Mixing gases
Entropy and the arrow of time blog entry by Sean Carroll

Phases
Phase diagram of water  and a blog entry by Sabine Hossenfelder

Tutorial on phase diagrams
PVT-surface

Laser Cooling
Bose-Einstein Condensation

Fluid mechanics
Special challenging questions for your diversion:
(1) (buoyancy) Quicksand (or mud) is much denser than the human body.  So why do people sink in it?!  Why do their eyes bulge before they disappear?  [Flying Circus of Physics, Q 4.130]
(2) (pressure) If you try to pour water into a coiled up hosepipe (wound around a horizontal axis and open at both ends) it often just won't go through, even if you're holding the end you're pouring into way up.  Why?  [Flying Circus, Q 4.8]
(3) Why do bugs explode over the windshield of a fast-moving car?  [Flying Circus, Q 4.28]

Aerodynamics of bicycles - a crash course in fluid dynamics.  Why do golf balls have dimples?

Applets:: Hydrostatic Pressure; Archimedes' Principle; Buoyancy forceWing Lift (simple)Wing Lift (advanced);
Various: Soap antibubbles; Pacific Northwest HydroprojectsFirst balloon to go around the world
Life at low Reynolds number - a classic article by EM Purcell.
Sucking water through a straw; Magdeburg Spheres; Soap Bubblesvortex shedding simulation movie

Other links
Bubble puzzles
Psychic Motor
Thermal Physics Jokes
Entropy on the World Wide Web
Satellite Tracker
Layers of the earth's atmosphere

Last modified: 9/22/2008 7:37 AM