Thread: Statistical Thermodynamics

Can someone please try and simply explain to me statistical thermodynamics & in particular why we need it & what it says? I've come across this funnily enough in a response to a creationist with regards to improbablility of life etc. I dont know if this bears any relevance to the theory whatsoever but would appreciate an idea of what it is about.

This is the underlying physics of the quantities we use in thermodynamics. For example: Temperature is the macroscopic equivalent to the microscopic picture of many particles having certain velocities. But these velocities are not random. They are statistically distributed. The same holds for gas pressure which is the macroscopic representation of many particles producing a force. Only the statistical approach to thermodynamics was e.g. able to advance into the quantum nature of radiation. Here is a suggestion: Read up Maxwell distribution and Planck distribution