Microstructural Evolution of Materials: Statistical Mechanics
Discover the principles of statistical mechanics that explain materials science phenomena.
Course Information
Certificate Track
Learn for Free
About this Course
In this first module of a four-part series of online modules, you will get an introduction to important concepts in statistical mechanics that are especially relevant to materials scientists. Topics include solid solutions, the canonical ensemble, and heat capacity.
This series introduces various phenomena in various classes of materials. You will learn how materials develop different microstructures based on the processing technique used, and how these microstructures relate to the properties of the material.
Covering similar content to the MIT course 3.022: Microstructural Evolution of Materials, this online version is intended for undergraduate engineering and science students, as well as professionals, who are interested in materials statistics, kinetics, and microstructural transformations.
Microstructural Evolution of Materials is a series of the following four modules:
What you'll learn
At the end of this first module of the course, you will be able to:
- Explain the entropy of a solid solution from a quantum mechanical perspective
- Understand the trends in heat capacity of a monatomic gas and an atomic solid
- Use the canonical distribution to explain both effect of gravitational force on the density of a gas and the origin of Curie’s law of paramagnetism.
Prerequisites
- University-level Calculus
- Structure of Materials or other similar course
- Thermodynamics; ideally, 3.012Tx: Thermodynamics of Materials
Meet your instructors
Juejun Hu
John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Professor Hu earned a BS in materials science and engineering at Tsinghua University in 2004 and a PhD in the same discipline at MIT in 2009. Before joining MIT, he was an assistant professor at the University of Delaware from 2010 to 2014. Professor Hu is a fellow of professional societies the American Ceramics Society, Optica, and SPIE.
