Corrections to An Introduction to Thermal Physics

November 1997 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 10: In the fifth line from the top, "molecues" should be "molecules".
• Page 33: Six lines from the bottom of the page, "fouth" should be "fourth".
• Page 41: Just under equation 2.19, "bizzarre" should be spelled with only one z.
• Page 56: Seven lines below equation 2.54, "less that you might expect" should be "less than you might expect".
• Page 61: At the very bottom of the page, the reference to "the following section" should be to the end of the current section.
• Page 66: Three lines below equation 3.17, "is also applies" should be simply "also applies".
• Pages 69-70: Throughout this discussion, references to "spins" pointing up or down should actually be to "magnetic moments". (Because the electron's charge is negative, its magnetic moment is opposite to its spin.)
• Page 71: Toward the end of the first paragraph, the statement that the "state of negative temperature won't last long" is incorrect. I am informed that experimentalists have succeeded in maintaining spin systems at negative temperature for weeks at a time.
• Page 83: The statement two lines below equation 3.63 is ambiguous and requires clarification. The precise statement is that for each species of particle, the chemical potentials for the two systems must be equal to each other. There is no general relation between the chemical potential for one species and the chemical potential for another species.
• Page 109: Four lines below the heading "Extensive and Intensive Quantities", "add twice as much stuff" is incorrect. The idea here is to add as much as you already have, so that when you're done, you have twice as much as before.
• Page 157: Immediately above inequality 6.89, "quantites" should be spelled "quantities". Also, inequality 6.89 needs a factor of Z_int, the internal partition function, on the left-hand side. The statement just below the inequality is not very precise, but is still correct provided that Z_int is not large.
• Page 176: Three lines below equation 7.48, "degrees Kelvin" should be "kelvin" (according to the Unit Police). On the same page, just below the heading "The Density of States", "a small nonzero" should say "at small nonzero".
• Page 179: Two lines above the heading "The Sommerfeld Expansion", the condition "T << epsilon_F" should be "kT << epsilon_F".
• Page 191: In the middle of the last paragraph before Problem 7.26, the statement about the dominant contribution to the entropy of the universe is probably wrong. It is true that the entropy of the background radiation is much greater than that of ordinary matter. But the entropy of black holes could easily be greater still. Later, in the last sentence of the same paragraph, "entropy Nk" should read "entropy is Nk".
• Page 193: Six lines below the subsection heading, "at the same rate" should instead read "with the same probability".
• Page 197: Two lines above equation 7.100, "emmisivity" should be spelled "emissivity".
• Page 231: Two lines below equation A.21, "ldots" should have been the TeX control-sequence "\ldots" which produces " . . . ". In the following line, L_z should be J_z. And in the fourth line of the next paragraph, "distict" should be "distinct".

Last modified on December 29, 1998.