Statistical Mechanics I

Instructor: Prof. Subhasish Banerjee
This course was one which I loved the most. We covered thermodynamics, the thermodynamic laws, we defined some new thermodynamic function, Maxwell relations, Phase transitions etc. After that, we went on doing the statistical aspect of the subject. It starter with the Kinetic Theory of gases where we did Boltzmann's Transport Equation, The "H-theorem", The Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution etc etc.

Books that we followed were:
  1. Modern Course in Statistical Physics by L.E.Reichl
  2. Introduction to Thermodynamics by Dittman & Zemansky
  3. Introduction to Thermodynamics and Thermostatistics by H.B.Callen (one of my favourites)
  4. Introduction to Statistical Physics by Kerson Huang (This is not the original advanced Kerson Huang and is popular in CMI as "baby huang" or "fake huang"....first nomenclature due to my room-mate Shreyas and second one due to Pavithran)
  5. Statistical Mechnics by Kerson Huang
  6. Statistical Mechanics by Pathria
  7. Statistical Mechanics of Particles by Mehran Kardar....again one of my favourites
The last three are advanced books which needs background in thermodynamics and little statistics. We got only one assignment, which can be found here.