UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS
B.Sc. DEGREE COURSE IN Physics
SEMESTER SYSTEM WITH CREDITS
(Effective from the Academic Year 2003-2004)

SYLLABUS

Semester II - Paper II - Thermal Physics

Duration of Examination: 3 hrs
Maximum Marks: 100
Credits: 4

Unit I Thermometry and Calorimetry

Platinum resistance thermometer - Callender & Griffith's bridge - Thermistor - Specific heat capacity - Specific heat capacity of solids - Dulong & Petit's law - Specific heat capacity of liquid - method of mixtures - Barton's correction - Specific heat of capacity of gases - C_p and C_v by Regnault's and Callender and Barne's methods- variation of specific heat capacity of diatomic gases.

Unit II Thermodynamics

Zeroth law of thermodynamics-First law of thermodynamics - Heat engines - petrol and diesel engines - reversible and irreversible processes - second law of thermodynamics - thermodynamic scale of temperature - entropy- change of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes - temperature - entropy diagram - third law of thermodynamics.

Unit III Low temperature Physics

Joule-Thomson effect - porous plug experiment: - liquefaction of gases - adiabatic demagnetisation - practical applications of low temperatures - refrigerating machines - electroflux refrigerator - Frigidaire - air conditioning machines - effects of CF₂ Cl₂ on Ozone layer.

Unit IV Conduction and radiation

Definition of thermal conductivity - thermal conductivity of bad conductor - Lee's disc method - radiation - Black body radiation - Wien's law, Rayleigh-Jean's law and Planck's law - Stefen's law - pyrometry - solar constant - sources of solar energy - some every day applications.

Unit V Statistical Physics

Quantum statistics of identical particles - Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi Dirac Statistics - applications Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac gases as degenerate gases.

Books for Study

Books for Reference

1. Heat and Thermodynamics - J. B. Rajam & C. L. Arora

2. Thermodynamics and statistical Physics - Sharma & Sarkar

3. Statistical Mechanics - Sathya Prakash & C.Agarwal

4. Fundamentals of Physics, 6^th Edition, by D.Halliday, R.Resnick and J.Walker, Wiley, NY, 2001.

5. Thermal Physics, A.B. Gupta and H. Roy, Books and Allied (P) Ltd., (2002.)

6. Physics, 4^th Edition, Vols I, II & II Extended by D.Halliday, R.Resnick and K.S.Krane, Wiley, NY, 1994..

7. CRC Handbook of Physics & Chemistry, 80^th Ed., CRS Press, NY, 1999.

8. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, VoIs. I, II, and III, by R P. Feynman, R B Leighton and M Sands, Narosa, New Delhi, 1998.