Physics

This course includes some experimental work that supports the lecture material.
Role within programme and connections to other courses. This course furnishes us with classical thermodynamics and a little about properties of materials. We have heard that “energy is conserved” and even have an appreciation of how important this principle is, but in first year mechanics energy is often apparently “lost” when friction does work. Here, at last , we introduce a complete formulation for energy conservation, comparing the work defined in first year with heat as a means of energy transfer. We discuss transformations of energy in a variety of processes, then go on to explain that not all of the energy is available for doing mechanical work. The theoretical framework of classical thermodynamics is beautifully self-contained, but this course also emphasises the link between the microscopic world of the kinetic theory (drawing on Newtonian mechanics as it does so) and the macroscopic world of the everyday, in preparation for the statistical thermodynamics to follow.
Content. Gases (ideal and real) and pressure, phases and phase diagrams, the state of a system, what is energy?, heat and work, first, second and third laws of thermodynamics, entropy, enthalpy and free energies, heat engines, refrigerators, heat pumps and efficiency, phase transitions, introductory kinetic theory.