Reddit reviews An Introduction to Thermal Physics

This was a pleasure to read.

The domain of physics is very narrow and the modern state of the field is highly specialized, so keep that in mind. If you have classical mechanics, multivariable calc, and preferably linear algebra (if not, MIT has tons of lectures online), you can start with quantum mechanics or statistical/thermal physics:

Griffith's Quantum Mechanics

Schroeder's Thermal Physics

Electromagnetism

I can't remember which physical chemistry text we used, but if you're concerned with atoms and molecules, you'll need that too. If you're concerned with nature at smaller scales, you'll need particle physics (and lots more math). Until you have a solid foundation in classical, thermal, and quantum, it's not a good idea to move on. You can't, for example, do much with quantum field theory if you don't have quantum mechanics. Both Shankar's and Susskind's lectures (and corresponding texts) go very quickly through classical and quantum, but skip much of the necessary examples that one requires when learning how to do physics. Just looking through these books will give you a general idea of what physics does concern itself with. If you want to skim through something more advanced (and not understand much of it) you could pick up Zee's QFT. This is also a good guide.

An Introduction to Thermal Physics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201380277/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_s6BfAbNNZABF5

This is the standard undergraduate text. It's the one I used. Super easy to read and the problems are fun. Best of luck!

> I was reading my Thermodynamics textbook, and the first line was "temperature is defined as that thing that is the same for two objects that have been touching for a long time" and then introduced more concepts such as relaxation time, etc.. the first chapter was 100% a layman's description of temperature.

It wouldn't happen to be Daniel V. Schroeder's An Introduction to Thermal Physics, would it? The simple definitions in the beginning and the following chapters that build upon that foundation really makes it one of the better physics textbooks. It helped me immensely to get a conceptual understanding of something that is quite complex. I can hardly imagine it being taught in another way now.

I can't say I have watched many of Khans videos. But the few I have watched, did to some extent leave some of the more rigorous 'nit-picking' for later. I see his videos as a good supplement to ones lectures and textbooks.

I can't stand Brian Greene. This is the book I got the idea from, I just added the bits about infinite and negative temperature.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201380277/

Take Physics Thermodynamics, it'll open your eyes. We use Schroeder 20 miles north of you. I had a Nuclear Energy Conversion course that was essentially our Thermo from our department and finally had the chance to see all of the theoretical physics applied to real world (well, 1970s reactors ;D) applications.

I'm up at SPSU finishing a Physics BS and just completed our Nuclear Engineering minor. I liked the similarities in curriculum because I had seen it before, but there were some ME/EE majors that weren't too thrilled with Physics Thermodynamics showing up in a Nuclear course.

Is your advanced lab course Modern, Electronics, or Adv Measurements?

By classical physics do you mean something similar to Intermediate Mechanics?

You should be able to relate Optics to Nuclear pretty well comparing it to what you've studied with neutrons passing through matter and moderators.

Sorry about the wall of text, I don't get to talk about both subjects much in either department.

You could always try a physics book on the subject. One of the common books used in introductory thermodynamics courses for physics majors is Thermal Physics by Schroeder. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Thermal-Physics-Daniel-Schroeder/dp/0201380277

It does a decent job at covering the physics behind thermodynamics and a good intro to statistical mechanics.

I am not sure if it meets your criteria of 'interesting' since it is geared at being a college textbook and reading it for leisure may be a bit tedious.

For math you're going to need to know calculus, differential equations (partial and ordinary), and linear algebra.

For calculus, you're going to start with learning about differentiating and limits and whatnot. Then you're going to learn about integrating and series. Series is going to seem a little useless at first, but make sure you don't just skim it, because it becomes very important for physics. Once you learn integration, and integration techniques, you're going to want to go learn multi-variable calculus and vector calculus. Personally, this was the hardest thing for me to learn and I still have problems with it.

While you're learning calculus you can do some lower level physics. I personally liked Halliday, Resnik, and Walker, but I've also heard Giancoli is good. These will give you the basic, idealized world physics understandings, and not too much calculus is involved. You will go through mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and "modern physics". You're going to go through these subjects again, but don't skip this part of the process, as you will need the grounding for later.

So, now you have the first two years of a physics degree done, it's time for the big boy stuff (that is the thing that separates the physicists from the engineers). You could get a differential equations and linear algebra books, and I highly suggest you do, but you could skip that and learn it from a physics reference book. Boaz will teach you the linear and the diffe q's you will need to know, along with almost every other post-calculus class math concept you will need for physics. I've also heard that Arfken, Weber, and Harris is a good reference book, but I have personally never used it, and I dont' know if it teaches linear and diffe q's. These are pretty much must-haves though, as they go through things like fourier series and calculus of variations (and a lot of other techniques), which are extremely important to know for what is about to come to you in the next paragraph.

Now that you have a solid mathematical basis, you can get deeper into what you learned in Halliday, Resnik, and Walker, or Giancoli, or whatever you used to get you basis down. You're going to do mechanics, E&M, Thermodynamis/Statistical Analysis, and quantum mechanics again! (yippee). These books will go way deeper into theses subjects, and need a lot more rigorous math. They take that you already know the lower-division stuff for granted, so they don't really teach those all that much. They're tough, very tough. Obvioulsy there are other texts you can go to, but these are the one I am most familiar with.

A few notes. These are just the core classes, anybody going through a physics program will also do labs, research, programming, astro, chemistry, biology, engineering, advanced math, and/or a variety of different things to supplement their degree. There a very few physicists that I know who took the exact same route/class.

These books all have practice problems. Do them. You don't learn physics by reading, you learn by doing. You don't have to do every problem, but you should do a fair amount. This means the theory questions and the math heavy questions. Your theory means nothing without the math to back it up.

Lastly, physics is very demanding. In my experience, most physics students have to pretty much dedicate almost all their time to the craft. This is with instructors, ta's, and tutors helping us along the way. When I say all their time, I mean up until at least midnight (often later) studying/doing work. I commend you on wanting to self-teach yourself, but if you want to learn physics, get into a classroom at your local junior college and start there (I think you'll need a half year of calculus though before you can start doing physics). Some of the concepts are hard (very hard) to understand properly, and the internet stops being very useful very quickly. Having an expert to guide you helps a lot.

Good luck on your journey!

I want to say it was from an undergraduate thermodynamics problem asking the question, "What is the likelihood of all the air molecules in a room occupying 99% of the space leaving a 1% vacuum?"

I probably just want to invoke Avogadro's constant, though. (You know, after you see a number a certain number of times, you like seeing it again.)

Sure no problem. These are the texts I used as an undergrad:

Classical Mechanics: Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, Thornton and Marion

Electrodynamics: Introduction to Electrodynamics, Griffiths

Statistical Mechanics: An Introduction to Thermal Physics, Schroeder

Quantum Mechanics: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Griffiths

For special relativity I never used a book strictly devoted to the subject. Thornton and Marion will cover it at the end, and so will Griffiths E&M. However my favorite source on special relativity is Landau's Classical Theory of Fields, the first few chapters.

I am using Conquering the Physics GRE as an overview, but I really enjoy anything from David Morin and David J. Griffiths for the level of questions and explanations (and in-book/online solutions manuals that go a long way towards showing you how to think like a physicist). But my "library" for preparing for the physics GRE is:

CM: Morin, Problems and Solutions in Introductory Mechanics and Introduction to Classical Mechanics

Gregory, Classical Mechanics for extra explanations and problems

EM: Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics 3e

QM: Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics 3e

Thermo/Stat.Mech: Schroeder, An Introduction to Thermal Physics

Kittel and Kroemer, Thermal Physics

Waves: Morin, on his website are ten chapters to what appears to be a Waves book in the making

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/waves/

Atomic, Lab Methods: Conquering the Physics GRE and any online resources I can find.

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If you email Case Western, they send a link to some amazing flash cards!

No problem. As for the Boltzmann distribution, it has to do with thermodynamics. Here's the Wikipedia article for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_distribution#Derivation

This article does a decent job of explaining what it is. The derivation that it links to, however, seems to be a little lacking (I only skimmed through it).

Just in case you want to learn more about thermodynamics, you could try this textbook: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Thermal-Physics-Daniel-Schroeder/dp/0201380277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369548035&sr=8-1&keywords=schroeder+thermodynamics

That's the textbook my school used, and it's actually one of the best textbooks I've used in physics or mathematics. It's also relatively cheap for a textbook.

For an undergraduate approach I recommend Schroeder. However, this book starts with thermal physics which is, well, a bit boring ;). The math is not hard, but developing that 'physics instinct' can sometimes be challenging.

For a more advanced, but very nice and systematic text, I recommend Toda, Kubo, et al.. Another graduate text is Huang.

There are also the books by Feynman and Landau and Lifshitz Pt. 1 (Pt. 2 is quantum field theory, which at this stage you probably will want to avoid).

Alternative to Schroeder "An Introduction to Thermal Physics" for self-study?

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Thermal-Physics-Daniel-Schroeder/dp/0201380277

Overall this is quite a good book but I am trying to use it for self-study and the author refuses to release any answers to the problems. His explanation was that if he releases any answers he cannot later un-release them.

Compounding this, his problems are often multi-stage problems where parts of a problem depend on earlier parts and one problem depends on the result of previous problems. In some cases you have 3 multi-stage problems building upon one another. At some point you realize something went wrong but you have no clue where...

OK lesson learned: For self study you need answers so you can check your understanding. This is just basic learning theory - you need feedback.

I have looked at a few TP books but none have answers for checking eg Kittel Thermal Physics, Blundell "Concepts in Thermal Physics".

He does have an answer book for instructors only.

Check out this text book:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Thermal-Physics-Daniel-Schroeder/dp/0201380277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265305881&sr=1-1

It goes from simple understanding to the statistical mechanics of what's going on.

Steer clear of engineering books if you want a good understanding as they often cut corners(because alot of stuff that is deeper doesn't apply to them) to make it more applicable to their design work.

For thermo/stat mech, the standard undergraduate texts are Schroeder (http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Thermal-Physics-Daniel-Schroeder/dp/0201380277), and I guess Blundell & Blundell (http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Thermal-Physics-Stephen-Blundell/dp/0199562105).

For Quantum Physics the standard undergradate books are the quantum mechanics books by Shankar, Griffiths, and sometimes Messiah. I personally didn't like any of them, I learned from Cohen-Tannoudji but it is more difficult mathematically. For more advanced books you can look at Sakurai or Landau's book.

There is no real standard book that I'm aware of for Nuclear/subnuclear physics for undergrads (because it is really a graduate level book). But I think Griffiths has a book on particle physics if you like his quantum mechanics book. He does like to talk alot though just so you know.