ABSTRACT
Magnetic solids form a special class of materials, and in the chapter, they again confine their attention to the thermodynamics of ideal paramagnetic materials that obey Curie’s law. Condensed matter is typically rather incompressible, and volume changes produced by pressures available in laboratory equipment are generally quite small. Magnetic solids form a special class of materials, and in the chapter, the authors again confine their attention to the thermodynamics of ideal paramagnetic materials that obey Curie's law. A comparison of the specific heat of a monatomic ideal gas with that given by the Dulong-Petit law for a solid at high temperature shows that they differ by a factor 2. Many interesting phenomena in condensed matter occur at low temperatures. In particular, it is important to introduce quantum statistics for systems of particles that may be either fermions or bosons, and this is done in later chapters of this book.
