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Reddit mentions of Statistical Mechanics, 2nd Edition
Sentiment score: 3
Reddit mentions: 3
We found 3 Reddit mentions of Statistical Mechanics, 2nd Edition. Here are the top ones.
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By chemist, do you mean undergraduate or postgraduate? What year of study are they in? It'd be difficult to study statistical mechanics from scratch; make sure the following prerequisites are in order:
For an introductory level book, I quite enjoyed Bowley and Sanchez. They go through relevant ideas in probability already and the appendix covers up some of the mathematical prerequisites. Further down the line, Huang is an excellent book: it is significantly more advanced than the previous, but the contents is both broad and detailed (I still refer to it for topics like the 2D Ising model). At the same time, you could also consider Volume 5 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau and Lifshitz. The Course is famously hardcore, but it imparts mastery like nothing else.
For Statistical physics I would second the recommendation of Pathria. Huang is also good.
For electromagnetism the standard is Jackson. I think it is pedagogically terrible, but I was able to slowly make my way through it. I don't know of a better alternative, and once you get the hang of it the book is a great reference. The problems in this book border from insane to impossible.
So that's the basics. It's up to you where to go from there. If you do decide to learn QFT or GR, my recommendations are Itzykson and Carroll respectively.
Good luck to you!
For an undergraduate approach I recommend Schroeder. However, this book starts with thermal physics which is, well, a bit boring ;). The math is not hard, but developing that 'physics instinct' can sometimes be challenging.
For a more advanced, but very nice and systematic text, I recommend Toda, Kubo, et al.. Another graduate text is Huang.
There are also the books by Feynman and Landau and Lifshitz Pt. 1 (Pt. 2 is quantum field theory, which at this stage you probably will want to avoid).