- #1
Manchot
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My thermal and statistical mechanics class has been using Kittel and Kroemer's Thermal Physics as a textbook, and though it's an okay book, I find the notation extremely frustrating. My main beef with it is that I'm never quite sure what the context of certain quantities is. (If you have the book, this is especially prevalent in Chapter 3, wherein a great deal of the important theory is derived.) For example, when deriving the partition function, they consider a system in thermal contact with a reservoir at temperature tau. Next, from the partition function, they define the thermal energy U as the expectation value of the energy of the system eigenstates. Okay, I'm fine with that: Z and U are functions of the states of the system and of the temperature of the reservoir in which the system is in contact.
After this, I tend to get lost, mainly due to their usage of entropy. When they derive the thermodynamic identity, they start by saying that entropy is a function of U and of the volume V. But what exactly do they mean by "entropy?" When a system is in contact with a reservoir at a certain temperature, the only entropy / degeneracy that can be easily defined is that of the combined system. If I calculate that, I get:
[tex]\sigma = \ln(g(E))[/tex]
[tex]= \ln(\sum{g_S(E_S)g_R(E_R)})[/tex]
[tex]= \ln(\sum{g_S(E_S)e^{\sigma_R(E_{tot})-E_S/\tau}})[/tex]
[tex]= \sigma_R(E_{tot}) + \ln(\sum{g_S(E_S)e^{-E_S/\tau}})[/tex]
[tex]= \sigma_R(E_{tot}) + \ln(Z)[/tex]
The ln(Z) part is obviously correct, but this result doesn't have the U/tau factor that you'd get if you calculated it from the partition function. So, where does the discrepancy come from?
After this, I tend to get lost, mainly due to their usage of entropy. When they derive the thermodynamic identity, they start by saying that entropy is a function of U and of the volume V. But what exactly do they mean by "entropy?" When a system is in contact with a reservoir at a certain temperature, the only entropy / degeneracy that can be easily defined is that of the combined system. If I calculate that, I get:
[tex]\sigma = \ln(g(E))[/tex]
[tex]= \ln(\sum{g_S(E_S)g_R(E_R)})[/tex]
[tex]= \ln(\sum{g_S(E_S)e^{\sigma_R(E_{tot})-E_S/\tau}})[/tex]
[tex]= \sigma_R(E_{tot}) + \ln(\sum{g_S(E_S)e^{-E_S/\tau}})[/tex]
[tex]= \sigma_R(E_{tot}) + \ln(Z)[/tex]
The ln(Z) part is obviously correct, but this result doesn't have the U/tau factor that you'd get if you calculated it from the partition function. So, where does the discrepancy come from?
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