Recent content by anf3

Does anyone have any good books, or other references, that they would recommend for studying for the thermodynamics & statistical mechanics portion of graduate qualifying exams? I didn't have any undergrad Stat Mech and my grad prof/class was really not good, to the point that I didn't really...

Thank you! Yes, the integrals becoming constants after being evaluated was what I was failing to think about.

Homework Statement Minimize the functional: ∫01 dx y'2⋅ ∫01 dx(y(x)+1) with y(0)=0, y(1)=aHomework Equations (1) δI=∫ dx [∂f/∂y δy +∂f/∂y' δy'] (2) δy'=d/dx(δy) (3) ∫ dx ∂f/∂y' δy' = δy ∂f/∂y' |01 - ∫ dx d/dx(∂f/∂y') δy where the first term goes to zero since there is no variation at the...