Course Identification
Physics module: Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics
Lecturers and Teaching Assistants
Prof. Oren Raz
Omer Chor, Shahaf Aharony Shapira
Course Schedule and Location
Second Semester
Tuesday, 09:15 - 12:30, Science Teaching Lab 3
04/03/2025
Field of Study, Course Type and Credit Points
Science Teaching (non thesis MSc Track): Lecture; Obligatory; Regular; 4.00 points
Attendance and participation
Estimated Weekly Independent Workload (in hours)
Syllabus
- Programming in iFigure: basic concepts in physical programming, issues as accuracy, runtime etc'.
- Modeling simple disc motion in a billiard: closed trajectories vs. open trajectories, ergodicity, chaos. What is the meaning of numerical simulations in chaotic systems?
- One disc, two discs, many discs: simulating a system of many particles.
- From mechanics to statistics: how to measure statistical quantities in simulations: distributions, histograms and why are they relevant.
- What is temperature? What is pressure? From simulation to abstract definition.
- Simple gas law: simulating gas in a piston and discovering ideal gas law.
- Non-ideal gas: adding interactions to the simulation. Van-der-Waalse gas law, Maxwell's contraction, phase transitions.
- Gas-Liquid-Solids in the simulation.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course students will be able to:
- Simulate simple mechanical systems at different levels of accuracy.
- Understand basic concepts in statistical physics.
- Demonstrate phase transitions in simula