Introduction to Statistical Thermodynamics

Statistical thermodynamics is where you finally see why the macroscopic laws from your earlier thermo courses actually hold: temperature, entropy, and free energy emerge from counting microstates and averaging over ensembles rather than being postulated. You'll spend the semester building partition functions for concrete systems — Einstein solids, paramagnets, ideal di- and polyatomic gases, Fermi and Bose gases, simple adsorption and polymer models — through five problem sets and two written exams, with Callen and McQuarrie as your main references. As a senior-spring requirement, it ties together classical thermo and quantum mechanics into the framework you actually need for physical chemistry research, materials, and anything involving chemical equilibrium at the molecular level.