
Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in. Click Sign in through your institution. Shibboleth / Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.Ĭhoose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. The problems and worked examples explore applications not just within physics but also to engineering, chemistry, biology, geology, atmospheric science, astrophysics, cosmology, and everyday life. You will also learn to use basic quantum physics and powerful statistical methods to predict in detail how temperature affects molecular speeds, vibrations of solids, electrical and magnetic behaviors, emission of light, and exotic low-temperature phenomena.
You will learn to apply the general laws of energy and entropy to engines, refrigerators, chemical reactions, phase transformations, and mixtures. This book will give you a working understanding of thermal physics, assuming that you have already studied introductory physics and calculus.
Alternatively, we can measure the bulk properties of a material, and from these infer something about the particles it is made of. So in thermal physics we assume that these motions are random, and we use the laws of probability to predict how the material as a whole ought to behave.
We can't possibly follow every detail of the motions of so many particles. Examples include the air in a balloon, the water in a lake, the electrons in a chunk of metal, and the photons given off by the sun.
Thermal physics deals with collections of large numbers of particles-typically 10 23 or so.