| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of writing this book is to explain basic concepts of equilibrium statistical
mechanics to the first year graduate students in engineering departments. Why
should an engineer care about statistical mechanics?
Historically, statistical mechanics evolved out of the desire to explain thermodynamics
from fundamental laws of physics governing behavior of atoms and
molecules. If a microscopic interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics were the
only outcome of this branch of science, statistical mechanics would not appeal to
those of us who simply wish to use thermodynamics to perform practical calculations.
After all, validity of thermodynamics has long been established.
In thermodynamics, a concept of fundamental equations plays a prominent role.
From one such equation many profound predictions follow in a completely general
fashion. However, thermodynamics itself does not predict the explicit form of this
function. Instead, the fundamental equation must be determined empirically for each
system of our interest. Being a science built on a set of macroscopic observations,
thermodynamics does not offer any systematic way of incorporating molecular level
information, either. Thus, an approach based solely on thermodynamics is not sufficient
if we hope to achieve desired materials properties through manipulation of
nanoscale features and/or molecular level architecture of materials.
It is in this context that the method of statistical mechanics becomes important for
us. Equilibrium statistical mechanics provides a general framework for constructing
the fundamental equation from a molecular level description of the system of interest.
It can also provide a wealth of molecular level insights that is otherwise inaccessible
even experimentally. As such, it is becoming increasingly more relevant to
engineering problems, requiring majority of engineering students to develop more
than just a passing acquaintance with the basic results of this subject. | en_US |
