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Entropy revisited: [Fwd: This Week's Colloquium]



I suspect this would be of interest so some of you:



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: This Week's Colloquium
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 08:00:00 -0800
From: Julie Reiner <reiner@cats.ucsc.edu>
To: colloq@physics.ucsc.edu

SpeakerMichael NauenbergPhysics Department, UC Santa CruzTitle:Entropy,
irreversibility, and the approach to thermal equilibrium: The foundation
ofstatistical mechanics revisitedAbstract: Entropy is one of the most
fundamental concepts of physics, but its meaning has continued to be the
subject of controversy since its original formulation as the basis for
the second law of thermodynamics by Clausius in 1854. Indeed, during the
past decade there have been numerous papers (over a 1000) proposing
extensions to the familiar statistical expression for entropy as a
measure of disorder which Boltzmann introduced in 1877, and Gibbs
elaborated later on. In this lecture I will expose the foundation of
statistical mechanics, and the special role of entropy by discussing in
detail the approach to thermal equilibrium of electromagnetic radiation
interacting with a simplified model of atoms, a subject that dates back
to the fundamental work of Planck and the origins of quantum mechanics
at the turn of the century. In particular, I will derive the fundamental
equilibrium distributions--Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and
Fermi-Dirac--from these dynamics, instead of invoking the conventional
postulate of equal probability for microstates. At the end, I will show
why recently proposed extensions (see, for example, Science, August, 23,
2002) of Boltzmann's relation of entropy to disorder are untenable
(cond-mat/0210561, Phys. Rev. E, Feb. 2003). DATE:Thursday, January 30,
2003TIME:4:00 P.M.PLACE:Thimann Lecture Hall 1
NOTE: Colloquia schedule / information is now
available on the World Wide
Web:http://physics.ucsc.edu/events/colloquia.html
Coffee and cookies will be served at 3:30 pm in the ISB Lobby