Maxwell’s Relations (Part 1)

The Maxwell relations are equations that show up whenever we have a finite-dimensional vector space V and a smooth convex function

U \colon V \to \mathbb{R}

They say that the mixed partial derivatives of U commute, but also that the mixed partial derivatives of various functions constructed from U commute. So in a sense they are completely trivial except for the way we construct these various functions! Nonetheless they are very important in physics, because they give generally valid relations between the derivatives of...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on September 17, 2021 12:39
No comments have been added yet.


John C. Baez's Blog

John C. Baez
John C. Baez isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.
Follow John C. Baez's blog with rss.