📖 This popular, often cited text returns in a softcover edition to provide a thorough introduction to statistical physics and thermodynamics, and to exhibit the universality of the chain of ideas leading from
the laws of microphysics to the macroscopic behaviour of matter. A wide range of applications illustrates the concepts, and many exercises reinforce understanding. Volume I discusses the probabilistic description of quantum or
classical systems, the Boltzmann-Gibbs distributions, the conservation laws, and the interpretation of entropy as missing information. Thermodynamics and electromagnetism in matter are dealt with, as well as applications to
dilute and condensed gases, and to phase transitions.