If you receive special consideration for the final exam, a supplementary exam will be scheduled after the end of the normal exam period. By making a special consideration application for the final exam you are declaring yourself available for a resit during the supplementary examination period and will not be eligible for a second special consideration approval based on pre-existing commitments. Please ensure you are familiar with the policy prior to submitting an application. Approved applicants will receive an individual notification one week prior to the exam with the exact date and time of their supplementary examination.

Classes Mixed Lecture and Tutorial/discussion The timetable for classes can be found on the University web site at: http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au/

Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials Recommended Text Concepts in Thermal Physics by Blundell & Blundell. This is the same text as used in PHYS2020. It will be used as a frequent reference for most of the unit but will not be followed through in a chapter-by-chapter approach. Statistical Mechanics by K Huang, Wiley. This graduate-level text will be used for basic concepts in quantum statistical mechanics, but contains useful material in all topics of the unit.

Additional References Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics by F Reif, McGraw-Hill is a mainstream undergrad textbook Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics, vol 1 by Landau and Lifshitz, any edition, is an advanced undergraduate/ graduate textbook

You can find additional resources, lectures and advice on the page of the Nobel Laureate Gerard t'Hooft

Course structure The topics of the course are roughly as follows week by week: 1. Brief introduction to large numbers, and principles of kinetic theory of gases. The Maxwell Boltzmann distribution. 2. Molecular velocity distribution and collisions. The Boltzmann Equation. Boltzmann's H theorem. 3. Molecular effusion and transport properties - viscosity, conductivity and diffusion. 4. Basic thermodynamic concepts: open/closed/isolated systems, microstates and macrostates, thermodynamic equilibrium and statistical entropy. Counting microstates and statistical temperature, microcanonical ensemble, explanation of equilibrium state. 5. Macroscopic thermodynamics: ideal gas, processes, state variables, internal energy and first law. Heat capacity. Law of Dulong and Petit. Irreversibility, extracting work, and the second law. 6. Entropy. Fundamental relation and Maxwell relations. Thermodynamic potentials. Chemical potential. Cooling real gases, Joule expansion, Joule-Kelvin expansion. Phase diagrams. Van der Waals gas, isotherms of the vdW gas, vdW gas-liquid transitions, Maxwell construction. 7. Introduction to Statistical Mechanics. Microcanonical, Canonical and Grand Canonical Ensembles, Partition functions. 8. Approximate methods of Statistical Mechanics. 9. Quantum gases. Identical particles, permutation symmetry, spin-statistics theorem, statistics of indistinguishable particles, Fermi vs Bose statistics, ideal Bose gas at high T, BEC, heat capacity of the Bose gas 10. Fermi gases; degenerate Fermi gases. Heat capacity of metals, Fermi pressure, Pauli paramagnetism. 11. Cold atomic and molecular gases. Methods of cooling. Selected applications. 12. Ising model, 2x2 toy model, exchange interactions, Ising Hamiltonian, Mean-field approximation, isotherms of the Ising model, compare vdW gas to Ising system. 13. Phase transitions and critical phenomena. Revision.

minor changes to unit content and assessment approach have been made.