Introduction to Entropy

Jonathan Allday taught physics at a range of schools in the UK. After attending the Liverpool Blue Coat School, he took his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, then gained a PhD in particle physics in 1989 at Liverpool University. Shortly after this, he started work on Quarks Leptons and the Big Bang, now published by Taylor & Francis and available in its third edition, which was intended as a rigorous but accessible introduction to these topics. Since then, he has also written Apollo in Perspective, Quantum Reality (now in its second edition), and Space-time, co-authored a successful textbook and contributed to an encyclopaedia for young scientists. He has also written on aspects of the history and philosophy of science. Outside of physics, Jonathan has a keen interest in cricket and Formula 1. Simon Hands was also educated at the Blue Coat School and Cambridge University, followed by a PhD in theoretical particle physics at the University of Edinburgh. After research positions at the universities of Oxford, Illinois, Glasgow, and then CERN, he taught and researched theoretical and computational physics at Swansea University for almost 30 years. He moved to the University of Liverpool in 2021, where he helps manage the DiRAC high-performance computing facility for astronomy, nuclear and particle physics theory. An elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, Simon enjoys singing and cycling.

Introduction: What is Entropy? Chapter 1: Zero. Chapter 2: One. Chapter 3: Ideal. Chapter 4: Two. Chapter 5: Omega. Chapter 6: The Quantum Realm. Chapter 7: Ensembles, Energy Levels and Microstates. Chapter 8: Identical Particles. Chapter 9: The Grand Canonical Ensemble. Chapter 10: Entropy and the Time Evolution of Quantum States. Chapter 11: The Density Matrix. Chapter 12: Quantum Entropy. Chapter 13: Life. Chapter 14: Information. Chapter 15: Death. Chapter 16: Black. Chapter 17: Afterthoughts. Appendix MA: Mathematical Preliminaries. PA1: Physics Appendix. Bibliography. Index.