At the end of this course, students should be able to understand the basic principles of thermodynamics. The interpretation of basic ideas and laws of thermodynamics is based on its statistical description. The basic laws of thermodynamics are also derived from principles of statistical physics. However, the main part of the course is mostly based on the classical thermodynamics.

Syllabus

1. The main ideas of thermodynamics. Descriptions of systems of many particles. State and process. Thermodynamic equilibrium.
2. First law of thermodynamics. Force, work, and heat. Adiabatic process. Quasistatic and reversible processes.
3. Temperature and entropy. Second law of thermodynamics.
4. Third law of thermodynamics. Heat capacity. Ideal gas processes.
5. Thermodynamic potentials (energy, free energy, enthalpy, Gibbs function). Maxwell relations.
6. Measurement of macroscopic parameters (temperature, heat capacity, compressibility) and relations between it.
7. Free expansion of a gas. Joule-Thomson process.
8. Heat engines. Implications of third law of thermodynamics.
9. Equilibrium and stability conditions. Dependence of thermodynamic quantities on mass. Law of mass action.
10. Phase transitions. Classification of phase transitions. First-order phase transitions, phase diagram.
11. Maxwell-Boltzmann gas.
12. Fluctuations.
13. Magnetism.

Literature

REIF, F. Fundamentals of statistical and thermal physics. Auckland: McGraw-Hill, 1965. x, [10], 6. ISBN 0-07-085615-X. info
KVASNICA, Jozef. Termodynamika. 1. vyd. Praha: Státní nakladatelství technické literatury, 1965. 394 s. info
Thermal physics. Edited by Ralph Baierlein. 1st publ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiii, 442. ISBN 0-521-59082-5. info
LEONTOVIČ, M. A. Úvod do thermodynamiky. 1. vyd. Praha: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1957. 191 s. info
FERMI, Enrico. Termodinamika [Fermi, 1973] : Thermodynamics (Orig.). 2. stereotip. izd. Char'kov: Izdatel'stvo Char'kovskogo universiteta, 1973. 136 s. info
KONDEPUDI, Dilip and Ilya PRIGOGINE. Modern thermodynamics : from heat engines to dissipative structures. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1998. xvii, 486. ISBN 0-471-97393-9. info
KVASNICA, Jozef. Statistická fyzika. 2. vyd. Praha: Academia, 1998. 314 s. ISBN 80-200-0676-1. info
LANDAU, Lev Davidovič and Jevgenij Michajlovič LIFŠIC. Statistical physics. Translated by J. B. Sykes - M. J. Kearsley. 3rd ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001. xvii, 544. ISBN 0-7506-3372-7. info

Teaching methods