Molecular Thermodynamics

The teaching of thermal and statistical physics in British universities is being fanned by a wind of change which blows from the west. Traditionally, this teaching proceeds by giving first and second year students a thorough grounding in classical thermodynamics (with a certain amount of elementary kinetic theory and work with the Boltzmann distribution) and then following it up in the third year with a course in statistical mechanics which aims to justify the thermodynamics as well as to provide the basis for further microphysical calculations.