A life in statistical mechanics

A First Exposure to Statistical Mechanics for Life Scientists

Statistical mechanics is one of the most powerful and elegant tools in the quantitative sciences. One key virtue of statistical mechanics is that it is designed to examine large systems with many interacting degrees of freedom, providing a clue that it might have some bearing on the analysis of the molecules of living matter. As a result of data on biological systems becoming increasingly quant...

Fracture mechanics-based life prediction of a riveted lap joint

In this paper, three-dimensional modeling of the fatigue crack growth profiles was performed in a simple riveted lap joint. Simulation results showed that mode I was dominated on the one side of the plates and the crack straightly grew on this side, while the other side of the plates was in a mixed-mode condition and the crack propagation path was not straight on this side. Afterward, the fract...

Justification in Statistical Mechanics

According to a standard view of the second law of thermodynamics, our belief in the second law can be justified by pointing out that low entropy macrostates are less probable than high entropy macrostates, and then noting that a system in an improbable state will tend to evolve toward a more probable state. I would like to argue that this justification of the second law of thermodynamics is fun...

Statistical Mechanics

Interventionism in Statistical Mechanics

I defend the idea that the fact that no system is entirely isolated (“Interventionism”) can be used to explain the successful use of the microcanonical distribution in statistical mechanics. The argument turns on claims about what is needed for an adequate explanation of this fact: I argue in particular that various competing explanations do not meet reasonable conditions of adequacy, and that ...