On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 12:14:36AM +0100, Richard Baker wrote: > So the former focuses more on thermodynamics (which deals in > quantities like pressures, volumes, energies, entropies and free > energies that characterise macrostates) and the latter more on > statistical mechanics (which looks on a deeper level to consider the > statistics of microstates).
Not exactly. You get entropy, pressure, volume, free energy, chemical potential, etc. in _Thermal Physics_. Perhaps I should say that the traditional approach develops independent of atoms, whereas the newer approach shows how the macroscopic laws and atoms are related. Thermal Physics tries to more closely link statistical mechanics with thermodynamics. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/
