Series "Studies in Mode Thermodynamics", 1991, Elsevier Science
Publisher, Amsterdam, 1991, 324 pp.
The fundamental goal of Statistical Mechanics is to link the detailed determinism of many-body microscopic dynamics to the phenomenological averaged description of macroscopic behavior. During my own 30-year study of statistical mechanics computers have completely transformed the field, substantially widening the scope of this goal by making it possible to follow the motion of millions, soon to be billions, of particles. The corresponding coupled nonlinear differential equations of motion can be solved, numerically, for time intervals including millions of discrete time steps.
By now computers are readily available instructional tools for leaing by doing. Computers are now firmly established in our high schools and low-cost transputers have made the speed of a CRAY available at the cost of an automobile. One can hope that this continuing growth of computational power will play a role in promoting a healthy diffusion of knowledge throughout the world.
But with our relatively newfound ability to compute comes a challenging responsibility. The challenge today is not so much generating results, as it is discovering imaginative ways to display results in comprehensible forms designed to promote understanding. Because the subject of this book, computational statistical mechanics, is now feasible, the goal of statistical mechanics has had to grow from the days when experiment and theory were the complementary alteative approaches to understanding. Our goal now is to achieve correspondence among three alteative descriptions of natural phenomena: theory, experiment, and computer simulation.
Contents
Mechanics
Thermodynamics
Principles of Statistical Mechanics
Applications of Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics
Principles of Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Applications of Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Principles of Hydrodynamics
Applications of Hydrodynamics
Kinetic Theory
Introduction to Nonequilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Applications of Nonequilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Summary
Useful Information
The fundamental goal of Statistical Mechanics is to link the detailed determinism of many-body microscopic dynamics to the phenomenological averaged description of macroscopic behavior. During my own 30-year study of statistical mechanics computers have completely transformed the field, substantially widening the scope of this goal by making it possible to follow the motion of millions, soon to be billions, of particles. The corresponding coupled nonlinear differential equations of motion can be solved, numerically, for time intervals including millions of discrete time steps.
By now computers are readily available instructional tools for leaing by doing. Computers are now firmly established in our high schools and low-cost transputers have made the speed of a CRAY available at the cost of an automobile. One can hope that this continuing growth of computational power will play a role in promoting a healthy diffusion of knowledge throughout the world.
But with our relatively newfound ability to compute comes a challenging responsibility. The challenge today is not so much generating results, as it is discovering imaginative ways to display results in comprehensible forms designed to promote understanding. Because the subject of this book, computational statistical mechanics, is now feasible, the goal of statistical mechanics has had to grow from the days when experiment and theory were the complementary alteative approaches to understanding. Our goal now is to achieve correspondence among three alteative descriptions of natural phenomena: theory, experiment, and computer simulation.
Contents
Mechanics
Thermodynamics
Principles of Statistical Mechanics
Applications of Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics
Principles of Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Applications of Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Principles of Hydrodynamics
Applications of Hydrodynamics
Kinetic Theory
Introduction to Nonequilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Applications of Nonequilibrium Molecular Dynamics
Summary
Useful Information