10
STATISTICAL QUANTUM MECHANICS
God does not throw dice.
Albert Einstein, 1926
God not only plays dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they cannot be seen.
Stephen Hawking, 1994
Figure 10.0. Gaming revenue for downtown Las Vegas.
Data drawn from Nevada Gaming Commission.
One year moving average 10 December 2008.
Courtesy of Hajor for Luxor Hotel, Nail Li for New York Hotel, and Frank Martin for the graph.
Mathematics is the language of science. Statistics, which is the science of collecting and making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individual entities including people, atoms, and molecules, is an important part of mathematics. The data may come from surveys or from experiments. Statistics deals with different aspects of data including planning for data collection, data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Planning for data collection includes designing surveys or experiments. The beauty of statistics for a physicist lays in the fact that its basic principles apply equally to both classical and quantum physics.
In This Chapter
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Statistical Distributions
10.3 Maxwell–Boltzmann Distribution
10.4 Molecular Systems with Quantum States
10.5 Distribution of Vibrational Energies
10.6 Distribution of Rotational Energies
10.7 Distribution of Translational Energies
10.8 Quantum Statistics of Distinguishable Particles: ...
