Editorial Review:
The series of texts Classical Theoretical Physics is based on the highly successful series of courses given by Walter Greiner and his colleagues at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, the volumes in this series will provide not only a complete survey of classical theoretical physics but also an enormous number of worked examples and problems to show students clearly how to apply the underlying principles to realistic problems. Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics covers: Thermodynamics - basic definitions of thermodynamics, equilibrium, state variables - the first and second laws - phase transitions and chemical reactions - thermodynamic potentials Statistical Mechanics - statistics of microscopic states and connection to the entropy - the microcanonical, canonical and grand canonical ensembles - applications of Boltzmann statistics Quantum Statistics - the density operator - many-particle wave functions - ideal quantum systems - the ideal Bose gas and applications to blackbody radiation, Kirchhoff's law, and lattice vibrations - the ideal Fermi gas and applications to condensed-matter physics, astrophysics, and nuclear physics - relativistic Bose and Fermi gases and applications to particle physics Real Gases and Phase Transitions - real gases and the virial expansion - classification of phase transitions and critical indices - the Ising and Heisenberg models
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Great graduate level text  2007-10-21
A really good graduate level text that was useful as a supplement for my stat mech class. Lots of worked examples, would be great for self study also. Greiner's field theory book is a good one too.
Good standard textbook, many examples, good for beginners to the field  2006-06-18
This book is typical for all books of the Greiner series.
It contains lots of solved sample problems scattered throughout the text. It has a readable, nice style but there are many unnecessary typing errors. All in all this is a readable book for beginners but nothing special.
No References and Many Careless Typos 2002-09-18
A slightly better graduate text is that by Pathria which is in its second edition. It is fairly clear that Greiner has borrowed heavily from Pathria's approach. Greiner's book is more comfortable to look at and read though.Greiner does not include a single reference in this book. I would like to point out that if this were an article submitted to a scientific journal, it would be rejected out of hand for this egregious lack of attribution. This is particularly bothersome with regard to comparing experiment with theory. Mr. Bromley, who wrote the preface, states that these comparisons are a plus for the book. While true, this is hardly unique. Every stat mech book I have quotes experimental results, but the others also cite the reference to the original work. This gives students (and teachers) the ability to look at the experimental work and to get the data for themselves, and it gives credit to those who did the work. What could have been a much better text is marred by too many typos and references to incorrect equation numbers. As well, I find that some "derivations", again contrary to a statement by Bromley, are of the "it can be seen that" variety, which is odd in a text which does go into some detail on many things, e.g. the derivation of the partition function for an ideal gas in the microcanonical ensemble. An example of a non-derivation is given in the discussion that follows eqn 7.67 which arbitrarily splits the velocity distribution into 3 multiplicative pieces. Since the big new thing for a student in this subject is the use of probability, it would have been much more appropriate to find the one-dimensional velocity distribution by integrating the 3d distribution over two of the components. There are other places in the book where the author fails to use this approach. Students find this confusing, I find it inconsistent. As it stands, the formula is correct, but there is not even a hint that it should be derived or questioned. I found the discussion of the purely classical derivation, the semiclassical derivation, and the quantum derivation of various quantities such as the IG partition function to be a bit confusing at times particularly when the Gibbs factor and the quantum correction h^3N were involved, perhaps it is just me. I would find it better if each derivation were given separately with a summary at the end. This would be more helpful, since some of the later derivations, e.g. Maxwell-Boltzmann are essentially classical in nature and could be arrived at from any of the formulas. On the other hand I found Chapter 12 on the Grand Canonical Ensemble to be excellent, especially the discussion of the distribution of occupation numbers on p. 308ff, an important topic that is not often discussed in Stat Mech books. All in all, though, this would be good book with a little more care and with an appropriate reference list. If you get it, pay attention as you read it.
Wow. 2002-07-30
All I can say is that I wish this text had been used in my graduate statistical physics class. The thorough explainations and derivations are very helpful and the extensive examples are priceless for students new to the subject.
Excellent thermodynamics, statistical mechanics text. 2000-02-10
The way this textbook covers the topic is excellent and its practice problems are perfect. This book deserves the equivalent respect of Landau's series. My only regret is its problem in English translation.
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