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I am working on a small project mainly concerning the Gibbs and mixing paradoxes arising in thermodynamics/statistical mechanics. Still cannot find good literature on the topic. Any suggestions (I certainly prefer textbooks over papers but anything will do).

Patzerook
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  • What kinds of 'paradoxes'? Give an example, please. – Jon Custer Jan 08 '16 at 00:58
  • Strictly speaking, the Gibbs paradox doesn't arise in thermodynamics but in a misunderstanding of proper state counting in statistical mechanics. See http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67810/gibbs-paradox-why-should-the-change-in-entropy-be-zero – CuriousOne Jan 08 '16 at 01:08
  • Jon Custer: the ones I mentioned in the question. The like of Gibbs, mixing and perhaps maxwell demon paradoxes.

    CuriousOne: You are right, I have read that several time without much understanding due to my little (yet progressing) statistical mechanics knowledge. Excuse my sloppiness. Anyways, do you have any recommendation of a detailed text about this topic ?

     – Patzerook Jan 08 '16 at 01:19
  • I guess we disagree about those being paradoxes then. – Jon Custer Jan 08 '16 at 01:44
  • @Patzerook: I am not sure we can help you much. Paradoxes are not failures of the theory but failures in the application of the theory. In a sense that belongs into history of science or psychology of hypothesis building, but it is not a physics topic. I hope you project is not important... it is, for sure, not well defined. – CuriousOne Jan 08 '16 at 01:46
  • @JonCuster They were considered paradoxes at one point and were solved, yet they are still known by this name. – Patzerook Jan 08 '16 at 02:15
  • @Patzerook: I am afraid that technically Jon Custer is actually correct. The definition of paradox is along the lines of "a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.". In case of the Gibbs paradox the result is wrong because the reasoning is wrong. It doesn't just sound senseless, it is senseless, therefor it doesn't quite fulfill the definition of a paradox. The relativistic twin paradox is a correct example. – CuriousOne Jan 08 '16 at 02:20
  • @CuriousOne Maybe it is a matter of taste, but I would not agree that Gibbs paradox should not be called a paradox. Gibbs paradox is how it is commonly called in literature, I find. The answer in the link you post explained the paradox in terms of indistinguishability of particles, but he did not explain within the framework of classical physics what the distinguishability really means. For Patzerook, you may have a look at Jaynes's paper for reference http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/gibbs.paradox.pdf , there you may find some textbooks too. – cnguyen Jan 08 '16 at 07:57
  • @ophelia: Many things in science are mislabeled. String theory, for instance, is not even a hypothesis at this point. As far as I can tell the Gibbs paradox does not qualify for the definition of a paradox, regardless of what the name says. Having said that, since it's a long solved problem, I wouldn't really spend too much time on it. – CuriousOne Jan 08 '16 at 08:13

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