The present book is a teaching text designed to introduce the fundamentals of the subject of statistical mechanics. The treatment given is designed to give the student a feeling for the topic of statistical mechanics without being held back by the need to understand complex mathematics. The text is concise and concentrates on the understanding of fundamental aspects. Numerous questions with worked solutions are given throughout.

The present book is a teaching text designed to introduce the fundamentals of the subject of statistical mechanics at a level suitable for students who meet the subject for the first time. The treatment given is designed to give the student a feeling for the topic of statistical mechanics without being held back by the need to understand complex mathematics. The text is concise and concentrates on the understanding of fundamental aspects. Numerous questions with worked solutions are given throughout.

Crystals have fascinated us for centuries with their beauty and symmetry, and have often been invested with magical powers. The use of X-ray diffraction, first pioneered in 1912 by father and son William and Lawrence Bragg, enabled us to probe the structure of molecules, and heralded the scientific study of crystals, leading to an understanding of their atomic arrangements at a fundamental level. The new discipline, called X-ray crystallography, has subsequently evolved into a formidable science that underpins many other scientific areas. Starting from the determination of the structures of...

The concept of reciprocal space is over 100 years old, and has been of particular use by crystallographers in order to understand the patterns of spots when x-rays are diffracted by crystals. In this book, the author starts with the crystallographer's point of view of real and reciprocal space and then proceeds to develop this in a form suitable for physics applications.