Instructor:  Todd Gingrich

Office:  The Internet and possibly Ryan 4018

Office Hours:   Wednesday 4-5 pm CST, Thursday 2:30-3:30 CST, Zoom Link

Telephone:  510-457-8600

Email:  todd.gingrich@northwestern.edu

Lecture:  Zoom Link

Time:  TuTh 9:40-11am CST

Midterm Exam:  Thursday, November 5.

Please consult the course syllabus for course objective and policies.

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

Lecture notes:

• Thursday, September 17, 2020: Introduction to the course, dynamics in chemistry, chaos, and ergodicity hypothesis. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, September 22, 2020: Microcanonical entropy and systems with fluctuating energy. [Link]
  
• Thursday, September 24, 2020: The Boltzmann distribution. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, September 29, 2020: Connecting statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. [Link]
  
• Thursday, October 1, 2020: The canonical ensemble. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, October 6, 2020: Legendre transforms - connecting partition functions and free energies. [Link]
  
• Thursday, October 8, 2020: What's partion-y about partition functions? What's free about free energies? [Link]
  
• Tuesday, October 13, 2020: Reversible work theorem. [Link]
  
• Thursday, October 15, 2020: Lots of ensembles. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, October 20, 2020: Pulling on a polymer. [Link]
  
• Thursday, October 22, 2020: Work fluctuation theorem. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, October 27, 2020: Ensemble equivalence. [Link]
  
• Thursday, October 29, 2020: Ensemble equivalence and Gibbs phase rule. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, November 3, 2020: Phase diagrams. [Link]
  
• Thursday, November 5, 2020: Ideal gas revisted and mass action. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, November 10, 2020: Crossovers and phase transitions. [Link]
  
• Thursday, November 12, 2020: The Ising Model. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, November 17, 2020: First and second order phase transitions. [Link]
  
• Thursday, November 19, 2020: Monte Carlo. [Link]
  
• Tuesday, November 24, 2020: Detailed balance. [Link]
  

Homework assignments will normally be made available on this website by Thursday of each week, and will be due on Friday of the following week at 5 pm. Late work will only be accepted if arrangements are made in advance or if there are particularly exceptional circumstances. 

• Problem Set 0, due Never! [PlottingDemo.ipynb]
  
• Problem Set 1, due Friday, September 27 at 5 pm. [BiasedCoinFlips.ipynb] [Solutions]
  
• Problem Set 2, due Friday, October 2 at 5 pm. [RandomLatticePolymer.ipynb] [Solutions]
  
• Problem Set 3, due Friday, October 9 at 5 pm. [Solutions]
  
• Problem Set 4, due Friday, October 16 at 5 pm. [Solutions]
  
• Problem Set 5, due Friday, October 23 at 5 pm. [Solutions]
  
• Problem Set 6, due Friday, November 6 at 5 pm. [Solutions]
  
• Midterm Exam, due Friday, November 13 at 5 pm. [Solutions]
  
• Assignment 7, due Friday, November 20 at 5 pm.
  
• Problem Set 8, due Wednesday, November 25 at 11:59 pm. [Ising1D.ipynb] [Ising2DFramework.ipynb] [Solutions]