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blog.kiel.how/NS162notes/Lesson 01 - What is Statistical Mechanics?.html

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Look around at the chunks of matter all around you. By now you probably have a couple decades of empirical experience in the macroscopic world (macroscopic = ‘the world you can see’), and depending on how inquisitive you are, you may know a great deal about how matter behaves under a variety of conditions…. Matter comes in chunks with uniform properties. If you throw one of these chunks it will glide through the air mostly unslowed until it hits the ground, perhaps with a crash or shatter. These chunks of matter can be shaped and layered and bonded together to make complicated and useful composite objects like the computer I’m typing on. Some chunks of matter react violently and explode or turn into new materials when brought into contact with one another. A hot chunk of matter, like an oven coil, will make anything touching it hot too. Rubbing two chunks of matter together will make them hotter. Small changes to the temperature of a chunk of matter sometimes have dramatic effects, lik

Lesson 1 - What is Statistical Mechanics? The Macroscopic World and Classical Thermodynamics Look around at the chunks of matter all around you. By now you probably have a couple decades of empirical experience in the macroscopic world (macroscopic = ‘the world you can see’), and depending on how inquisitive you are, you may know a great deal about how matter behaves under a variety of conditions…. My very inquisitive niece encountering a novel form of matter. Matter comes in chunks with uniform properties. If you throw one of these chunks it will glide through the air mostly unslowed until it

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