THERMODYNAMICS OF SOLIDS

Prerequisites & course information

Requisites: M S & E 330 , or graduate/professional standing, or member of Engineering Guest Students Course Designation: Grad 50% - Counts toward 50% graduate coursework requirement Repeatable for Credit: No Last Taught: Fall 2026 Learning Outcomes: 1. Describe relationships between heat, work, and entropy and its implications for heat engines Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 2. Describe the connection between microscopic states and thermodynamic variables and how to calculate the latter from the former using partition functions Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 3. Describe how mixing alters the free energy of the unmixed components in terms of ideal and non-ideal contributions Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 4. Describe the role of thermodynamic potentials and their implications for materials properties Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 5. Describe how Gibbs energy, chemical potential, and activity are related and their role in chemical equilibrium Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 6. Read and interpret different types of phase diagrams Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 7. Analyze a scientific or engineering problem to obtain selected insights enabled by thermodynamic analysis and communicate them at a basic level Audience: Undergraduate 8. Analyze a scientific or engineering problem to obtain the major insights enabled by thermodynamic analysis and communicate them at a semi-professional level Audience: Graduate Learning Outcomes: 1. Describe relationships between heat, work, and entropy and its implications for heat engines Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 2. Describe the connection between microscopic states and thermodynamic variables and how to calculate the latter from the former using partition functions Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 3. Describe how mixing alters the free energy of the unmixed components in terms of ideal and non-ideal contributions Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 4. Describe the role of thermodynamic potentials and their implications for materials properties Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 5. Describe how Gibbs energy, chemical potential, and activity are related and their role in chemical equilibrium Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 6. Read and interpret different types of phase diagrams Audience: Both Grad & Undergrad 7. Analyze a scientific or engineering problem to obtain selected insights enabled by thermodynamic analysis and communicate them at a basic level Audience: Undergraduate 8. Analyze a scientific or engineering problem to obtain the major insights enabled by thermodynamic analysis and communicate them at a semi-professional level Audience: Graduate