Phase Transitions for Beginners

Written by an experimentalist famous for his discovery of stishovite, with vast experience in phase transition studies, this book is devoted to a description of the continuous and discontinuous phase transitions. It includes chapters outlining the Van der Waals model, hard sphere and soft sphere models of melting, scaling phenomena, renormgroup approach to phase transitions, and experimental examples to illustrate various phase transitions.Unlike conventional books covering the same topic, this is meant for undergraduate students and experimentalists to understand basic concepts in the physics of phase transitions.