Instructor:  Todd Gingrich

Office:  Ryan 4018

Email:  todd.gingrich@northwestern.edu

TA:  Camelia Roy

Email:  cameliaroy2030@u.northwestern.edu

Office Hours:  to be settled at the first lecture

Lecture:  Tech LG66

Time:  TuTh 9:30-10:50am

First lecture:  Tuesday, September 29

Final oral exams:  Monday, December 7 through Wednesday, December 9

Please consult the course syllabus for course objectives and policies.

This site is used to post lecture notes, problem sets, and problem set solutions.

Lecture notes:

Lectures are at the chalkboard this year. The notes below are from 2025 and are posted in advance so you can read along or ahead. The content will match closely, but the seams will not fall in exactly the same places, so next to each set of notes I will mark the dates on which we covered it.

• Introduction to the course, dynamics in chemistry, chaos, and ergodicity hypothesis. [Link]
  
• Microcanonical entropy and systems with fluctuating energy. [Link]
  
• The Boltzmann distribution. [Link]
  
• Connecting statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. [Link]
  
• The canonical ensemble and fluctuation-response relations. [Link]
  
• Legendre transforms - connecting partition functions and free energies. [Link]
  
• Reversible work theorem. [Link]
  
• Lots of ensembles. [Link]
  
• Ensemble equivalence. [Link]
  
• Pulling on a polymer. [Link]
  
• Crooks fluctuation theorem. [Link]
  
• Phase coexistence. [Link]
  
• Ideal gas chemical potential. [Link]
  
• Crossovers versus phase transitions. [Link]
  
• Ising phase transitions. [Link]
  
• Landau picture of phase transitions. [Link]
  
• Introduction to Monte Carlo. [Link]
  
• Markov chain Monte Carlo (2023 notes). [Link]
  
• Molecular dynamics primer (2023 notes). [Link]
  

Problem sets are posted here on Thursdays and are due the following Wednesday at 5 pm (unless otherwise stated). Late work will only be accepted if arrangements are made in advance or if there are particularly exceptional circumstances. 

• Problem Set 0, due Never!