Statistical Mechanics (Repost)

The rapid increase, in the past few decades, of knowledge concerning the structure of molecules has made the science of statistical mechanics a practical tool for interpreting and correlating experimental data. It is therefore desirable to present this subject in a simple manner in order to make it easily available to scientists whose familiarity with theoretical physics is limited. This book, which grew out of lectures and seminars given to graduate students in chemistry and physics, aims to fulfill this purpose.

The development of quantum mechanics has altered both the axiomatic foundation and the details of the methods of statistical mechanics. Although the results of a large number of statistical calculations are unaffected by the introduction of quantum mechanics, the chemist's interest happens to be largely in fields where quantum effects are important. Consequently, in our presentation, the laws of statistical mechanics are founded on the concepts of both quantum and classical mechanics. The equivalence of the two methods has been stressed, but the quantum-mechanical language has been favored. We believe that this introduction of quantum statistics at the beginning simplifies rather than puts a burden upon the initial concepts. It is to be emphasized that the simpler ideas of quantum mechanics, which are all that is used, are as widely known as the more abstract theorems of classical mechanics which they replace.