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11 - Statistical Mechanics Out of Equilibrium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2014

Henry McKean
Affiliation:
New York University
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Summary

This is much harder. I quote from Feynman [1964] at some length

With this chapter we begin a new subject which will occupy us for some time. It is the first part of the analysis of the properties of matter from the physical point of view, in which, recognizing that matter is made out of a great many atoms, or elementary parts, which interact electrically and obey the laws of mechanics, we try to understand why various aggregates of atoms behave the way they do.

It is obvious that this is a difficult subject, and we emphasize at the beginning that it is in fact an extremely difficult subject, and that we have to deal with it differently than we have dealt with the other subjects so far. In the case of mechanics and in the case of light, we were able to begin with a precise statement of some laws, like Newton's laws, or the formula for the field produced by an accelerating charge, from which a whole host of phenomena could be essentially understood, and which would produce a basis for our understanding of mechanics and light from that time on. That is, we may learn more later, but we do not learn different physics, we only learn better methods of mathematical analysis to deal with the situation.

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Probability , pp. 352 - 401
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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