PHYS 427 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Course Description
Prerequisite
PHYS 213/214 and PHYS 325 or consent of the instructor.
Textbook
Thermal Physics, C. Kittel and H. Kroemer and highly recommended for learning more physical intuition behind the formalism is also Elements of Thermal Physics, 5th or later edition by James Wolfe
Notes and Discussions
Please check the course website each day for announcements, assignments, solutions and class notes. The website will be important for the distribution of course material, during the pandemic PHYS 427 is essentially held online. Discussions will contain important material for the course, please make every effort to attend and participate in the discussions. And please do not hesitate to ask any questions you may have on the material in discussions, lectures, and office hours.
Homework
Homework will be assigned on Tuesdays and will be due on Tuesday at 12 noon of the following week. Assignments will be returned with the solutions one week after that. Please deposit electronic versions of your assignments on GRADESCOPE.COM before 12 noon on Tuesdays (the due date). Late assignments will be marked down 20% for each day beyond the due date, i.e., if your raw score is x, your score one day late would be 0.8 x. The homework sets must be clearly written. Every homework set has a maximum score of 100 points in total.
Exams
There will be two in-class midterms and a final exam. They, too, will be distributed and collected via gradescope. More information about the Exams can be found at the EXAMS tab on the website.
Here is the zoom information for the exams:
Grading
| Course Component | Percentage of Grade |
|---|---|
| Discussion | 10 |
| Homework | 30 |
| Midterm Exam 1 | 15 |
| Midterm Exam 2 | 15 |
| Final Exam | 30 |
General Information
There are several excellent texts available that offer different perspectives. The books on reserve in the library are listed below.
- Thermal Physics by C. Kittel and H. Kroemer
- Thermal Physics by D. Schroeder
- Elements of Thermal Physics, 5th edition by James Wolfe
- Equilibrium Thermodynamics by C.J. Adkins
- Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics by Herbert B. Callen
- Statistical Physics, 3rd edition by L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz
- Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics, F. Reif
Extra Practice Problems:
The recommended textbooks have additional practice problems. The book by James Wolff and the book by Reif and others have the solutions in the back or the book. And the text book by Kittel and Kroemer has examples that can serve as practice problems. The recommended textbooks are available in the library if you do not have them, also on the reserve shelf. If you look up the topics covered in class and go through corresponding problems and examples in the text books that will give you additional practice for the materials. Also, it will help to redo some of the homework and discussion problems to get more practice. Hope that helps !