The Kac ring or the art of making idealisations

DOI10.1007/S10701-020-00373-1MaRDI QIDQ828337zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Julie Jebeile

Publication date 8 January 2021

Published in Foundations of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-020-00373-1

zbMATH Keywords

Bolzmann's \(H\)-theoremidealisationKac ringmacroscopic irreversibilitymodel explanationmolecular chaos hypothesisscientific model

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Philosophy of mathematics (00A30) Physics (00A79) Boltzmann equations (35Q20) Classical dynamic and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics (general) (82C05) Kinetic theory of gases in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C40)

Review text

This work is built on a chapter of the PhD thesis of the author and explores the role of idealizations in a model introduced by \textit{M. Kac} [Probability and related topics in the physical sciences, New York: Interscience Publications (1959)], the so-called Kac ring, which is argued to be an active one rather than a limitation. The situation in which a toy model contains idealisations that represent general features remaining true for different empirical target systems is suggested to be true in general. The paper first discusses the historical context in which the model came into life, as well as the model itself, motivating why it might serve the purpose of enabling us to grap how to reconcile the observable irreversible behavior with time reversibility and recurrence. The author further discusses the role of models and their interpretation in philosophy of science. She motivates how the idealisations in the Kac ring model are designed to make consequences of the Boltzmann's assumptions easy to draw. She stresses in particular how each idealisation plays an active role in the model representing by analogy a general property of macroscopic phenomena as hypothesised in the H-theorem of Boltzmann.

Recommendations

• Boltzmann's Dilemma: An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics via the Kac Ring
• New perspectives on Kac ring models
• Statistical irreversibility of the Kac reversible circular model
• Talk about toy models
• A rigourous demonstration of the validity of Boltzmann's scenario for the spatial homogenization of a freely expanding gas and the equilibration of the Kac ring

Cites work

• An extension of the Kac ring model
• Boltzmann's Dilemma: An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics via the Kac Ring
• Can Classical Structures Explain Quantum Phenomena?
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3143162 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3148320 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1118850 (Why is no real title available?)
• Irreversibility in the derivation of the Boltzmann equation
• New perspectives on Kac ring models
• Talk about toy models

Cited in

(5)

• New perspectives on Kac ring models
• Boltzmann's Dilemma: An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics via the Kac Ring
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 15843 (Why is no real title available?)
• The Ehrenfests' use of toy models to explore irreversibility in statistical mechanics
• Dynamics of the Kac ring model with switching scatterers

This page was built for publication: The Kac ring or the art of making idealisations

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q828337)