Statistical Thermodynamics Fundamentals and Applications [Paperback]

This 2006 textbook discusses the fundamentals and applications of statistical thermodynamics for beginning graduate students in engineering and the physical sciences.Statistical Thermodynamics: Fundamentals and Applications discusses the fundamentals and applications of statistical thermodynamics for beginning graduate students in the engineering sciences. This book features a step-by-step development of the subject with few presumptions concerning previous exposure of students to statistics, quantum mechanics or spectroscopy. Each chapter is carefully written to address student difficulties in learning this challenging subject, which is fundamental to combustion, propulsion, transport phenomena, spectroscopic measurements and nanotechnology. Students are made comfortable with their new knowledge by the inclusion of both example and prompted homework problems.Statistical Thermodynamics: Fundamentals and Applications discusses the fundamentals and applications of statistical thermodynamics for beginning graduate students in the engineering sciences. This book features a step-by-step development of the subject with few presumptions concerning previous exposure of students to statistics, quantum mechanics or spectroscopy. Each chapter is carefully written to address student difficulties in learning this challenging subject, which is fundamental to combustion, propulsion, transport phenomena, spectroscopic measurements and nanotechnology. Students are made comfortable with their new knowledge by the inclusion of both example and prompted homework problems.Building on the Maxwell-Boltzmann method of step-by-step development of the subject, this book makes few presumptions concerning students' previous exposure to statistics, quantum mechanics, or spectroscopy. The book begins with the fundamentals of statistical thermodynamics, pauses to recover needed knowledge from quantum mechanics and spectroscopy, and then moves on to applications involving ideal gases, the solil6