The book is written in a stimulating style and is accompanied by a large number of exercises appropriately placed within the text and by self-assessment problems at the end of each chapter. Detailed solutions of all the exercises are provided.

Contents: The Kinetic Theory of Gases: Velocity and Position Distributions of Molecules in a Gas; Brownian Motion; Transport Coefficients; Statistical Physics of a Paramagnets: Essential Background in Thermodynamics; Thermodynamics with Magnetic Variables; Microscopic States and Averages; Isolated Paramagnet - Microcanonical Ensemble; Isolated Paramagnet - Subsystems and Temperature; Paramagnet at a Given Temperature; Order, Disorder and Entropy; Comparison with Experiment; Statistical Physics and Thermodynamics: The Canonical Ensemble and Thermodynamics; Harmonic Oscillator and Einstein Solid; Statistical Mechanics of Classical Systems; Statistical Mechanics of an Ideal Gas; The Gibbs Paradox and the Third Law; Fluctuations and Thermodynamic Quantities; From Ideal Gas to Photon Gas: An Ideal Gas of Molecules with Internal Degrees of Freedom; Gases in Chemical Reactions; Phonon Gas and the Debye Model; Thermodynamics of Electromagnetic Radiation; Of Fermions and Bosons: Grand Canonical Ensemble; Statistical Mechanics of Identical Quantum Particles; Electrical Conductivity in Metals; Boson Gas.

Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students in physics and engineering.  less