The final exam will be based on the machinery you used in your assignments and previous midterms. This includes all assignments (but excludes black holes as mentioned in class).
Below is a reminder / overview of topics covered in each homework. Hopefully this will serve as a look-up table for concepts you may have missed or might be rusty.
- spins, harmonic oscillators, thermal baths, and Boltzmann statistics
- heat capacity, einstein solid, more harmonic oscillators
- equipartition, random walk, paramagnetism, generalized forces & work, isolated vs isothermal
- Langevin forces (fluctuation-dissipation), random walks (Brownian motion & laser noise)
- density of states for arbitrary systems, phase space for particles in chambers
- statistical definitions of thermodynamic quantities, gas practice (forces, work, thermo adiabatic vs quantum adiabatic)
- fancy chain and probabilistic forces
- clouds of atoms, classical partition functions and tricks
- N-particle wavefunctions, fermion counting, Fermi energy, and chemical potential, bosons, Bose-Einstein condensate physics and chemical potential
- Perfect absorbers, emissivity and black holes (black holes not on final)
I'm also around this week and have set aside some extra time for office hours, so please take full advantage of this if you have questions!
Cheers,
Jack
