I've recently obtained the book "Molecular Driving Forces" by Dill & Bromberg, which introduces statistical thermodynamics and all the associated mathematics. It is on Google print.
I'd like us to do a series of discussions on it, for questions like
- What is entropy? (ch 6)
- entropy1.doc: Notes on chapters 1-7a: statistical themodynamics & entropy, presented 26 May 05. (This is a MATLAB notebook so that some of the calculations can be modified and redone interactively if you have MATLAB running; Not many, because I was just playing to see if this would help...)
- How do entropy and energy relate to quantities we can measure? (ch 7)
- What is free energy? (ch. 8)
- What is charge and electrostatic potential? (ch. 20&21)
- How do molecules interact? (ch. 24)
- How do they catalyze reactions? (ch. 27)
- What is cooperative binding? (ch. 28)
- What is hydrophobicity? (ch. 29&30)
- What are the energies for polymers? (ch. 31-33)
I'll start today with the first question. If you want to look at chapter 6 on google print, see if this will work:
http://print.google.com/print?id=GUYPUeixLlUC&pg=81&lpg=81&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3DWhat%2Bis%2Bentropy%26ie%3DUTF-8%26id%3DGUYPUeixLlUC&sig=zMbu0xmicsE40VdT1E8unBFEvQA
Or go to the book, look for "what is entropy", and start on page 81.
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JackSnoeyink - 26 May 2005
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