Re: Entropy question

Andy Resnick wrote:

[...]

I agree with what you said about continuum mechanics and its rigorous
formulation... basically it's because you never have to face the issue
of the force exerted by a particle through a field on itself, and you
never face bound states.

>Especially so, a large part of *mechanics* is concerned with dynamical
>behavior, but thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (at least the way
>you use it above) is solely concerned with *equilibrium*. Even the
>statistical mechanics of steady state is way more complicated: see
>volume 10 of L&L.

Yes, but there is also the wide field of nonequilibrium thermodynamics.
One of my favourite refs is

L C Woods, The Thermodynamics of Fluid Systems (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1975), especially Part II on process thermodynamics. Lots of
fundamentals on stuff like the Onsager relations and all the asusmptions
they depend on, etc.

>I wonder if we are getting off track here: my thesis is that
>"statistical mechanics" contains concepts not derivable from mechanics-
>concepts that cannot be considered as an approximation to the dynamics
>of mass-points. Or of the deformation of continous media. Or of quantum
>fields. Also, I'm not claiming that statistical mechanics is in some
>way more fundamental than mechanics.

I would be interested as well, at least in knowing where some of that
stuff came from. Quantum statistics seems to me to always be about
discrete particles.

What's the wave function of a continuum?

(Yes, even though the continuum is usually a set of approximations over
large numbers of particles... see Tolman, Goldstein, etc).

--
ciao,
Bruce

drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

.

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