It's a new year, with new lectures. Today is an introduction to Thermal and Statistical Physics. We do... more

Prof. Carlson is teaching a new course this semester, entitled Solid State Physics.Here is a taste of the new course,... more

This is a final review for the last 1/4 of the course. This is a very short lecture, because we... more

This is a final review for the first 3/4 of the course. Lecture Audio

We finish two more examples of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem. This is a theorem that pops up everywhere! It means that... more

Brownian motion was discovered by a botanist named Brown, when he looked at water under a microscope, and observed pollen... more

Supercooling Demonstration (thanks to special guest Prof. Ken Ritchie): Put filtered water in a plastic bottle in your freezer for,... more

Oil and water -- they don't mix. Or do they? Due to the entropy of mixing, any tiny amount of... more

Now that we know what order parameters are (see last lecture), we'll use the order parameter of a phase to... more

We finish the van der Waals equation of state, and use it to illustrate the liquid-gas phase transition. It turns... more