Thermal and Statistical Physics

Monday, October 03, 2005

Lecture 12: Reversible and Irreversible Expansions

Now that we've derived absolutely everything about the ideal gas from scratch,
it's time to do something useful with it! We'd like to eventually learn how to use this stuff to build engines and refrigerators. Today we discuss the basic processes (reversible expansions) that are the building blocks of engines and refrigerators.
We also cover Bose condensation at the end of class, and learn why their statistics makes bosons sticky.


Lecture Audio