Statistical Mechanics: The Theory of the Properties of Matter in Equilibrium; Based on an Essay Awarded the Adams Prize in the University of Cambridge 1923-24 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from Statistical Mechanics: The Theory of the Properties of Matter in Equilibrium; Based on an Essay Awarded the Adams Prize in the University of Cambridge 1923-24

In attempting to study the physical state of matter at high temperatures on the lines suggested by the notice for the Adams Prize Essay for 1923 - 1924, it was at once apparent that the problem demanded all the available resources of present-day statistical mechanics. These have been somewhat increased in recent years, and the whole aspect of the kinetic theory of matter, at least in full statistical equilibrium, has been steadily altered by the development of the Quantum Theory. As a result there is no recent systematic exposition of the equilibrium theory of statistical mechanics*, envisaging throughout both classical and quantized systems, to which one may appeal in the further applications that it is proposed to make here. Prof. Darwin and I have been fortunate enough in recent years to have developed a method (new in this connection) which enables a systematic exposition to be undertaken with, we would submit, a sufficient degree of elegance. It has, at the same time, been possible to apply the results to a problem more immediately related to that proposed - that is to a theoretical study of the state of matter in stellar reversing layers and in the interior of gaseous stars.

These were of course the main problems with a view to which the essay was first written, but, for the reasons just given, it was thought best not to concentrate entirely on applications in the essay itself but to begin instead with the systematic survey of the equilibrium theory which was then needed and perhaps is still not superfluous. The essay, accordingly, from the first took the form of a monograph on the Equilibrium Theory of Statistical Mechanics. Originally the applications of the theory were mainly astrophysical, but it has been a simple matter to expand their scope. My object was to include all types of application of the equilibrium theory, so that, however inadequately, the monograph should cover the whole field. In the end, however, I have made no attempt to apply the theory to surfaces, or to liquids beyond the theory of dilute solutions; my knowledge of these branches of the theory is still too meagre to justify an exposition of them.

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