Corrections to An Introduction to Thermal Physics

December 1998 edition (please note that this edition is now obsolete)

by Daniel V. Schroeder, Department of Physics, Weber State University

Here is a list of known errors in this prepublication edition. If you find an error that is not listed here, please e-mail me at dschroeder@cc.weber.edu.

• Page iii: Chapter 6 and Section 6.1 actually begin on page 139, not 137.
• Page 25: Just below equation 1.46, the curly brace should be an italic f.
• Page 29: Five lines below equation 1.57, "enthalphy" (in bold, no less!) should be "enthalpy".
• Page 30: Add a closing parenthesis ")" at the very end of Problem 1.38.
• Page 72: Just below equation 3.21, the claim that S(0) is "usually" zero or negligible is wrong (or at least misleading). For elemental solids it is generally true. For compounds, however, there is frequently a significant amount of entropy that comes from a multiplicity of possible molecular orientations in the crystal, even at absolute zero. Examples include such common substances as water (ice) and carbon monoxide. This "residual entropy" usually isn't too hard to calculate using combinatoric methods. Glasses, which have no regular crystal structure, have a particularly large entropy at zero temperature.
• Page 126: At the end of the first paragraph, the claim that the Curie temperature is "typically about 1000 K" is correct for iron but incorrect for most ferromagnets.
• Page 168: In Problem 6.39, the claim that the internal partition function is simply the rotational partition function is correct only for molecules that have a nondegenerate ground state. Nitrogen is an example. Oxygen, however, has an electronic ground state with degeneracy 3, and thus requires a further factor of 3 inside the logarithm. This factor should be included in Problem 6.41; you can then compare your calculated value of S to the measured value found in standard tables and obtain very good agreement. (Orientations of nuclear spins can lead to further degeneracy, but this contribution to the entropy is generally not included in standard tabulations because it is present even at zero temperature.)
• Page 228: In the fourth line of the third paragraph, "monte carlo" should be capitalized.
• Page 240: At the end of the first paragraph, the claim that the Curie temperature is "around 1000 K" is correct for iron but incorrect for most ferromagnets.
• Page 247: In the sixth-to-last line of the pseudocode Ising model program, "m(i,j)" should be "s(i,j)".

Last modified on July 9, 1999.