Reddit reviews Thermal Physics (2nd Edition)

Griffiths for Quantum Mechanics and E&M

Taylor's Classical Mechanics

Kittel & Kroemer for Statistical Thermodynamics

These are the only ones I can attest to personally, they're for undergraduate level understanding. Kittel&Kroemer can seem dense and difficult to understand at first, but once you work through problems and spend time on each chapter, it will become apparent how efficient the book is.

Kittel - Thermal Physics.

My favorite undergraduate physics text, is beautifully and simply written with intuitive examples and problems that are easy to relate to. Explains entropy (from a quantum POV) on the first page. You don't need a teacher (my prof at berkeley who taught this class was god awful) for this subject: you need to be open-minded and patient. Work your way through with discipline and you'll see the pay-offs.

Remember that there are a few interpretations of entropy: ask a chemist and you'll initially get a different answer than a classical physicist, who will initially give you a different answer than a quantum physicist. Eventually, they will all agree that they are saying the same thing, but it takes some working.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-2nd-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889
Note, you don't need to get the second edition, or a new book. Go pick your self up a nice used copy of the first edition for like 25 bucks, or the second (if you want) for like 60.

Alternatively, you MAY be able to find it here in the first two non-sponsored links on this page: http://rapidlibrary.com/index.php?q=kittel+thermal+physics+solution

BUT that is probably piracy or evil or something and I don't condone or suggest you do it at all. I just put the link there for your information, so you know.

You should read the thermal text written by Kittel and Kromer
http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-2nd-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889

Well, unfortunately it sounds like you want two different things -- a "deeper" dive into thermo with more abstraction, and an elaborated look at applications to biology. It would be hard to find a text that really gets you both, I think.

I can't help with the biology thing, but a deeper abstract look at thermo would definitely be covered in Thermal Physics by Kittel: https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-2nd-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889

This book starts from the deepest most abstract foundation of thermodynamics, a field called Statistical Mechanics. Are you familiar with that topic at all? If not this text may be a tad challenging. It is also very abstract. Many find it to be a boring book but I find it challenging, interesting, and rewarding.

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.

​

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

Kittel and Kroemer! This is a great Stat Mech book starting from first principles that I just had a semester of. You'll be able to derive all sorts of gas laws.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-Edition-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889

> Detailed balance only applies to individual games. It makes no statement at all about the collective pool of players.

Detailed balance is a property of the system as a whole. The Elo system is based on the principle that you can define a means of exchanging points that leads to an equilibrium distribution of ratings, where differences in ratings correspond to expected outcomes of games.

> Additionally, I've already proven to you, via the actual FIDE rules, that this condition doesn't always hold.

You've shown that FIDE imperfectly implements the Elo system, and that in absurd situations (e.g., Magnus Carlsen playing a 101-game match against a player ranked more than 1000 Elo points below him), FIDE ratings would be affected by these implementation details.

> Additionally, I've already shown via the rules that detailed balance falls apart with the FIDE implementation (which is actually the real world implementation, hence, rating inflation is guaranteed)

Only in situations where players play huge numbers of games against opponents who are rated more than 400 points above or below them. That doesn't happen in the real world.

> The lower rated players contribute to the higher rated players ratings, either directly (i.e., Caruana, So, Kramnik playing 1800 rated players in a few Open tournaments last year) or indirectly (1800's playing 2400's in an open, and the 2400's playing 2600's, and the 2600's playing 2700's).

What percentage of games are between players that are more than 400 rating points apart? The FIDE implementation works just fine if an 1800 player plays a 2200 player, who plays a 2600 player, who plays Carlsen. In that case, FIDE's rules implement Elo almost exactly. The only inaccuracy is in circumstances like an 1800 player playing Carlsen directly, and even then, the impact on FIDE's Elo system is minimal (one Elo point might be generated, which will quickly get dispersed throughout the entire pool of players worldwide).

> So, again, you don't have a clue about what you're talking. Literally everything you've written has been wrong, especially your assumptions.

Except that between us, I'm the only one who's actually demonstrated that I know how the Elo system works. I don't think you know what "detailed balance" means, or that you understand what it means for the Elo system to be an equilibrium process. If you had studied physics at university, you'd know these concepts.

> This is why you're a 1200 rated liberal arts student with a bachelor's degree and not someone who does more important things. You are incapable of understanding relatively simplistic concepts. Stick to reading blogs and wikipedia pages.

It's funny that you keep falling back to this supposed insult. First of all, I have nothing against liberal arts students with a bachelors degree. But most smart liberal arts students I know would have recognized long ago in this conversation that the person talking about stat mech and detailed balance probably isn't a liberal arts major. I cited Wikipedia to you because that's more useful than telling you to go read Kittel and Kroemer. But by all means, if you really want to jump from this Reddit thread into a full-blown study of thermodynamics, read the latter.

If you look at the link I gave, there's a number of specific studies where they look at one specific problem in college-level physics. If you look at the one of your choice, you'll likely see that after they studied the problem and how students respond to it, the approach changed substantially. The careful studies they do requires a lot of time, so they don't come out with new editions of their text every year. In the case of the University of Washington, once they have a new version of their material, they supplement the classroom with handouts of the new text.

There's no need for hyperbole. Yes, new textbooks in the US are quite expensive. Do you have any source for the claim that any substantial amount of textbooks which are used at the college level publish new editions every year? That frequency disagrees with my experience.

I can name some texts which have had absurdly small changes to them. E.g. Statistical Physics by Kittel and Kroemer. They released a 2nd version of their second edition with only a couple pages about BEC and the Greenhouse Effect. But I have also seen textbooks which vary greatly between editions and have a long shelf lifetime.