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( Statistical thermodynamics)
In thermodynamics, statistical thermodynamics is the study of the microscopic behaviors of thermodynamic systems using probability theory. Statistical thermodynamics, generally, provides a molecular level interpretation of thermodynamic quantities such as work, heat, free energy, and entropy. Statistical thermodynamics was born in 1870 with the work of Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, much of which was collectively published in Boltzmann's 1896 Lectures on Gas Theory.[1] Boltzmann's original papers on the statistical interpretation of thermodynamics, the H-theorem, transport theory, thermal equilibrium, the equation of state of gases, and similar subjects, occupy about 2,000 pages in the proceedings of the Vienna Academy and other societies. The term "statistical thermodynamics" was proposed for use by the American thermodynamicist and physical chemist Willard Gibbs in 1902. According to Gibbs, the term "statistical", in the context of mechanics, i.e. statistical mechanics, was first used by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1871. The essential problem in statistical thermodynamics is to determine the distribution of a given amount of energy E over N identical systems.[2] The goal of statistical thermodynamics is to understand and to interpret the measurable macroscopic properties of materials in terms of the properties of their constituent particles and the interactions between them. This is done by connecting thermodynamic functions to quantum-mechanic equations. Two central quantities in statistical thermodynamics are the Boltzmann factor and the partition function. In 1738, Swiss physicist and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli published Hydrodynamica which laid the basis for the kinetic theory of gases. In this work, Bernoulli positioned the argument, still used to this day, that gases consist of great numbers of molecules moving in all directions, that their impact on a surface causes the gas pressure that we feel, and that what we experience as heat is simply the kinetic energy of their motion.
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Statistical thermodynamics Subcategories
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