Instructor:  Todd Gingrich

Office:  The Internet

Office Hours:   Thursdays 1 pm, Zoom Link

Telephone:  510-457-8600

Email:  todd.gingrich@northwestern.edu

Lecture:  Zoom Link

Time:  MTuWF 1-1:50pm CST

Midterm Exam:  TBA

The course syllabus contains additional information about notes, evaluations, collaboration, programming assignments, and a course outline.

The course website (this site) will be used to post lecture notes, special notes, homework assignments, and homework solutions.

Lecture notes:

• Friday, May 8, 2020: Introduction to the course, steady states of dynamical systems, macroscopic versus microscopic measurements. [Link]
  
• Monday, May 11, 2020: Macrostates, steady states, and equal a priori weights. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, May 12, 2020: Random walks and counting microstates. [Link]
  
• Wednesday, May 13, 2020: Boltzmann entropy and thermal baths. [Link]
  
• Thursday, May 14, 2020: Office Hours. [Link 1] [Link 2]
  
• Friday, May 15, 2020: The Boltzmann distribution. [Link]
  
• Monday, May 18, 2020: Connecting beta and temperature. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, May 19, 2020: Conditions for equilibrium. [Link]
  
• Wednesday, May 20, 2020: Introducing generating functions. [Link]
  
• Thursday, May 21, 2020: Office Hours. [Link]
  
• Friday, May 22, 2020: Connecting free energies and partition functions. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, May 26, 2020: What's partion-y about partition functions; what's free about free energy? [Link]
  
• Wednesday, May 27, 2020: Reversible work. [Link]
  
• Thursday, May 28, 2020: Office Hours. [Link]
  
• Friday, May 29, 2020: Irreversible work recap and potentials of mean force. [Link]
  
• Monday, June 1, 2020: Two-state kinetics. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, June 2, 2020: Three-state kinetics (transition states). [Link]
  
• Wednesday, June 3, 2020: Activated versus diffusive processes. [Link]
  
• Friday, June 5, 2020: Diffusion and a course recap. [Link]
  

Homework assignments will normally be made available on this website one week before they are due. Late work will only be accepted if arrangements are made in advance or if there are particularly exceptional circumstances. 

• Problem Set 1, due Friday, May 15 at 1 pm [Solution]
  
• Problem Set 2, due Friday, May 22 at 1 pm [Solution]
  
• Problem Set 3, due Friday, May 29 at 1 pm [Solution]
  
• Problem Set 4, due Friday, June 5 at 1 pm [Solution]
  
• Final Exam, due Friday, June 12 at 5 pm [Solution]