Time:
MWF 9:25 - 10:15
Location:
322 Jordan Hall of Science
Professor:
Dan Gezelter
phone: 631-7595
office: 372 Nieuwland Science Hall
e-mail: gezelter@nd.edu
Office hours: Whenever my office door is open and I’m not otherwise occupied
Web page:
Texts:
Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics, by David Chandler
Statistical Mechanics, by Donald A. McQuarrie
These should be relatively easy to find at online vendors.
Grade:
| Problem Sets (roughly bi-weekly): | 40% |
| In-class Midterm | 25% |
| Open-book take-home Final: | 25% |
| Computational Projects: | 10% |
Other:
This class follows the binding Code of Honor at Notre Dame. The graded work you do in this class must be your own. In the case where you collaborate with other students, make sure to fairly attribute their contribution to your project. Group work is tolerated except for exams. The midterms and final must be done completely independently.
Remember that representing work that you did not produce as your own, including work generated or materially modified by AI, constitutes academic dishonesty. Use of generative AI in a way that violates an instructor’s articulated policy, or using it to complete coursework in a way not expressly permitted by your instructor, will be considered a violation of the Honor Code.
One note about group work: Statistical Mechanics deals with some intellectually challenging material. The only way to learn the subject is to actually do the problems on your own without consulting the internet. After you have made an honest and painful individual attempt at solving a problem, you may confer with your classmates or with me. However, you must write up the solutions to the problems on your own. Solutions which are incorrect, but which have good written explanations of why each step was carried out, will be given higher scores than those which do not.
The computational projects will require some amount of coding. ANY computer language may be used (including Matlab, Python, etc.) These projects may be done in pairs.
You may email me at any time with questions.
Problem Sets:
I’ll be posting the problem sets on the problem set web page as they are released.
Class Notes:
I’ll be posting the class notes as we complete a logical section (roughly every 2 weeks) on the notes web page each week.