Condensation phenomena in statistical mechanics refer to the abrupt accumulation of a significant fraction of a system’s degrees of freedom into a dominant, macroscopically occupied state. This ...

Statistical mechanics provides the framework for deriving macroscopic thermodynamic properties from the microscopic characteristics of matter. Central to this discipline is the concept of entropy, ...

The Monist, Vol. 102, No. 4, General Topic: Philosophy of Probability (October, 2019), pp. 424-438 (15 pages) There are two theoretical approaches in statistical mechanics, one associated with ...

The principle that "like attracts like" also applies in science. Water and oil do not mix, and the tiny particles floating within them tend to gather ...

At more than 2 meters long, the human DNA molecule uses intricate folding patterns to fit into cells while locally unfolding to express genes. Such phenomena, however, are difficult to measure in ...

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I will contrast the two main approaches to the foundations of statistical mechanics: the individualist (Boltzmannian) approach and the ensemblist approach (associated with Gibbs). I will indicate the ...

A research team led by Prof. PAN Ding, Associate Professor from the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, and Dr. LI Shuo-Hui, Research Assistant Professor from the Department of Physics at the Hong ...

I RECENTLY walked by a physics department office that had a sticker on it saying something like “Heisenberg may or may not have been here”. This is in part a nod to the quantum cat, which, while it is ...

Advanced science textbooks are not generally known for their jocularity, but a purported image showing the introductory sentences from one such work is downright gloomy: This chapter on ...

Newton’s third law tells us that for every action, there’s an equal reaction going the opposite way. It’s been reassuring us for 400 years, explaining why we don’t fall through the floor (the floor ...