Physics 971: Statistical Mechanics

Syllabus


Office hours:
Monday 3:15-4:15
Wednesday 10:00-11:00
or by appointment
Office: 330 Cardwell


The final is a 24-hour take home exam. It will be posted on this website at 10am on Thursday 12/19. It is due in my office Friday 12/20/2013 at 10am. You may use any class materials (lecture notes, textbook, homeworks, posted solutions) but no outside materials (other books, internet). Use of Mathematica is acceptable, but please indicate where it has been used. Work alone, and do not discuss the exam with your classmates until all exams have been turned in. You may email me for questions or clarifications, and all responses will be posted here to be shared with the class.

Final solutions
Exams can be picked up from my office the week of 12/30.

Questions and Clarifications:

• Question 3: The gas is a large reservoir of the blocking molecules, but only one of them can bind to the zipper at any given time.
• Question 4: Theta is the average surface coverage, which is the same as the expectation of the site occupancy variable n_i.
• Question 1: The state energy (epsilon) can be anything.
• Question 3: The zipper is a toy model for DNA. In a DNA zipper the links are A, T, G, and C bases. This justifies the 1-to-1 alignment of the problem. Also, in the DNA case the blocking molecule would be an enzyme that recognizes a specific sequence of bases. This justifies the claim that the molecule can only bind to one position (M) on the zipper.
• Question 4: There is a minor error on the final. The state energies should be -U+e and -U-e (note the minus sign in from of the U). A revised copy has been posted.
• Question 3: The question refers to both N_b and N_B. This is a typo, both of these are the same.

Homework 7 has been graded and can be picked up in my office after 1:30pm.

There was an error on the syllabus regarding the midterm dates. The correct dates are 9/26 and 11/5 11/12 (see below). A corrected copy of the syllabus has been posted above. Sorry for the error.

Midterm 1 solutions This is the corrected solution set

Midterm 2 solutions



Homework assignments:

Homework 1 Due 9/10/2013 solutions

Homework 2 Due 9/24/2013 solutions

Homework 3 Due 10/10/2013 solutions

Homework 4 Due 10/22/2013 solutions

Homework 5 Due 10/31/2013 11/7/2013 solutions

Homework 6 Due 12/3/2013 solutions

Homework 7 Due Friday 12/13/12 solutions






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