14 Quantum Mechanical and Classical State Densities

Abstract

Regardless of its rather problematic foundation (see Chap. 4), Boltzmann’s “recipe” to calculate thermodynamic behavior from a classical Hamilton function of a system works extremely well. This recipe essentially consists of his entropy definition, the first and second laws. Using this recipe, not only the thermodynamic behavior of gases, but also thermodynamic properties of much more complicated systems, like liquid crystals, polymers, etc., which are definitely quantum mechanical systems, may be computed to very good precision.