Description¶
This website hosts the course materials for “Chem 5630: Statistical Mechanics for Chemistry and Biology,” taught during the Spring semester in the Department of Chemistry at Iowa State University.
The objective of the course is to provide students in STEM fields with a rigorous theoretical foundation in statistical mechanics while highlighting its computational power for tackling a wide range of complex chemical and biological problems.
The course places strong emphasis on computation, with extensive discussion of Monte Carlo methods, Molecular Dynamics, stochastic processes, and modern machine learning techniques.
All course materials are organized as Jupyter notebooks and can be executed either locally on a personal laptop or through Google Colab.
Prerequisites¶
No prior programming experience is assumed. Python 3 and its scientific computing ecosystem are introduced at the beginning of the course in an accessible, hands-on manner.
The only formal prerequisites are a basic working knowledge of calculus and prior exposure to thermodynamics, as typically covered in undergraduate chemistry curricula.
Feedback¶
If you find a typo or have suggestions for improvement, please open an issue on GitHub. Feedback and contributions are very welcome and greatly appreciated.