Thermodynamics & statistical mechanics

Statistical mechanics is a branch of theoretical physics and chemistry that studies, using probability theory, the average behavior of a mechanical system where the state of the system is uncertain. A common use of statistical mechanics is in explaining the thermodynamic behavior of large systems. Microscopic mechanical laws do not contain concepts such as temperature, heat, or entropy, however, statistical mechanics shows how these concepts arise from the natural uncertainty that arises about the state of a system when that system is prepared in practice. The benefit of using statistical mechanics is that it provides exact methods to connect thermodynamic quantities to microscopic behavior, whereas in classical thermodynamics the only available option would be to just measure and tabulate such quantities for various materials. This book contains ten chaters. First chapter presents Maxwellian view of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. In second chapter, we discuss the important relations between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in extensive and nonextensive systems through two different approaches and revealed the inherent correlations between thermodynamics and statistical physics. In third chapter, we review the continuum, statistical thermodynamics of surfaces and interfaces in soft matter where both the energy and entropy of the surface are comparable. The problem of correlation between the temperature of the target surface and the mass-spectrometer signal in LV-MS has been theoretically analyzed in fourth chapter. The objective of fifth chapter is to make a connection between macro-parameters and meso-cracks using the models of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. The goal of sixth chapter is to propose a self-consistent stochastic thermodynamics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics are respected in the appropriate limit. Seventh chapter focuses on sate-of-the-art first-principles-based theoretical methodology and concepts which are valuable for obtaining a greater understanding and prediction of surface processes and phase transitions at the atomic level. Eighth chapter describes statistical mechanical proof of the second law of thermodynamics based on volume entropy. The aim of the ninth chapter is to show a new approach to modeling SMAs based on the block-spin-appraoch and renormalization in statistical mechanics. Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics of systems with long-range interactions have been described in last chapter.