Skill — Connect macroscopic quantities to microscopic behaviour.
Appears in chapters
06·09·11
Linked atoms
43 linked atoms.
06 Centre of mass
09 Kinetic theory of gases
- Mean free path
- What is an ideal gas
- From invisible chaos to visible order
- Derivation of the ideal gas law
- Internal energy of an ideal gas
- Worked example — Helium in a braking lorry
- Worked example — Equipartition and degrees of freedom
- Degrees of freedom
- Internal energy is purely kinetic
- Microscopic origin of pressure
- Problem — Falling gas cylinder that stops
- Problem — Diffusion of a smell
- Problem — Two gases at the same temperature
- Problem — Internal energy of a monatomic gas
- Problem — Rubber and heat
- Problem — Hydrogen or oxygen at the same temperature
- Problem — Why coffee cools down
- Problem — Why the atmosphere has no helium
- Problem — Pressure and molecular collisions
- Problem — Pressure on a paper cone
- Problem — Estimating collisions on a square centimetre
- Problem — Fermi estimate: collisions on the skin
- Problem — True or false on ideal gas and velocity
- Problem — True or false on the properties of gases
- Root-mean-square velocity
11 Entropy
- Boltzmann and microstates
- Entropy of a crystal as T→0
- Entropy and disorder
- Entropy in a free expansion
- Freezer and life
- Ink in water: microstates
- Entropy as information
- Boltzmann’s formula
- The arrow of time: why the past differs from the future
- The consequences of the second law
- Reading the ln W vs E graph
- Macrostate and microstate
- Qualitative: coffee cooling down
- Qualitative: the falling glass
- Challenge: the Gibbs paradox
- True or false on entropy (advanced)