ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a physics, textbook-like summary of statistical physics and thermodynamics, with a clear to applications in biochemistry. Readers with previous experience in intermediate or upper level undergraduate courses in those disciplines will likely find much familiar material. Physical equilibrium of the reactions in the sense that most particles have average properties, not that chemical equilibrium is in place. The statistical mechanical view of any system treats its multiple particles as well-behaved variations on a single entity. At one extreme, particles may be truly identical in all measurable ways, such as He atoms in a gas sample. Particles are distinguished according to their intrinsic spin properties. If the particle total spin is half-integer, the particle is a fermion and the Pauli Exclusion Principle applies.
