Template talk:Statistical mechanics topics

New template

I made this template because I thought it would be helpful to guide readers around different statistical mechanics articles. Please be bold in updating this or otherwise; this template is only an idea, and it would be wonderful if this could help guide more article writing in this subject area. Please feel welcome to make changes as you see fit!! :-) --HappyCamper 17:27, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea, if we get it right. If not, its a bad idea. A few objections to its present state:

• Thermodynamics is more than a sub-topic of statistical mechanics. It stands by itself, it needs stat mech to give a microscopic explanation of its results, but its valid alone
• I did something like this in a table a bit further down the article, trying to distinguish between classical, fermi-dirac and bose-einstein stat mech. It has some articles missing in the template.
• equations of state in thermo are not as fundamental as the "fundamental equations" so they seem like a side topic in stat mech
• We need some kind of logical organization, not a random bunch of topics. PAR 19:53, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi PAR - yes, you are quite right...at the moment, I am sort of out of ideas, which was why I added it to the article prematurely. I would be happy with whatever changes are made. Should the template end up being a "disaster", I wouldn't mind deleting it myself. I did notice the table at the bottom; I wasn't sure whether it would be good to duplicate this or not. It might be worthwhile to do so. --HappyCamper 04:15, 26 December 2005 (UTC)