Fermions Vs. Bosons Explained with Statistical Mechanics!

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord!

If I roll a pair of dice and you get to bet on one number, what do you choose? The smart choice is 7 because there are more ways for 2 dice to come up 7 than any other number. Well, it turns out that you can apply the same logic to predicting the behavior of the universe. Let’s see how some of our most powerful tools in physics are really a game of cosmic craps.

Episode Companion Playlist:

Check out the Space Time Merch Store

Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements!

Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Fernando Franco Felix & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, & Stephanie Faria
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

Spacetime is produced by Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.
This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.
© 2023 PBS. All rights reserved.

Space Time Was Made Possible In Part By:

Big Bang Sponsors
Ian Jones
Bryce Fort
Peter Barrett
David Neumann
Sean Maddox
Alexander Tamas
Morgan Hough
Juan Benet
Vinnie Falco
Fabrice Eap
Mark Rosenthal

Quasar Sponsors
Vivaan Vaka
Glenn Sugden
Alex Kern
Ethan Cohen
Stephen Wilcox
Christina Oegren
Mark Heising

Hypernova Sponsors
Ivari Tölp
Vyce Ailour
Zachary Wilson
Kenneth See
Gregory Forfa
Kirk Honour
Joe Moreira
Bradley Voorhees
Marc Armstrong
Scott Gorlick
Paul Stehr-Green
Ben Delo
Scott Gray
Антон Кочков
John R. Slavik
Donal Botkin
John Pollock
Edmund Fokschaner
chuck zegar
Jordan Young
Daniel Muzquiz

Gamma Ray Burst Sponsors
Matthew Oldfield
Lucas Kazakevicius
Massimiliano Pala
Thomas Nielson
Joe Pavlovic
Ryan McGaughy
Chuck Lukaszewski
Edward Hodapp
Cole Combs
Andrea Galvagni
Jerry Thomas
Nikhil Sharma
Ryan Moser
Jonathan Cordovano
John Anderson
David Giltinan
Scott Hannum
Bradley Ulis
Craig Falls
Kane Holbrook
Ross Story
teng guo
Mason Dillon
Matt Langford
Harsh Khandhadia
Thomas Tarler
Susan Albee
Frank Walker
Matt Quinn
Michael Lev
Terje Vold
James Trimmier
Andre Stechert
Paul Wood
Kent Durham
jim bartosh
Ramon Nogueira
Paul Suchy
Ellis Hall
John H. Austin, Jr.
Diana S Poljar
Faraz Khan
Almog Cohen
Alex Edwards
Daniel Jennings
Cameron Sampson
Russ Creech
Jeremy Reed
David Johnston
Michael Barton
Andrew Mann
Isaac Suttell
Bleys Goodson
Robert Walter
Mirik Gogri
Mark Delagasse
Mark Daniel Cohen
Nickolas Andrew Freeman
Shane Calimlim
Tybie Fitzhugh
Robert Ilardi
Eric Kiebler
Craig Stonaha
Graydon Goss
Frederic Simon
Dmitri McGuiness
John Robinson
Jim Hudson
David Barnholdt
David Neal
John Funai
Bradley Jenkins
Jiri Brokovec
Cody Brumfield
Thomas Dougherty
Dan Warren
Patrick Sutton
John Griffith
Dean Faulk

[Blindseeker]

Cheers to the likely unsung heros of Space Time, the Graphics Artists. Great looking episode.

[Fireheart]

I love the minigame at the end of every episode where you have to guess how they’re gonna tie in the words “space time”

[thefakeadel]

This kind of video sparked my interests back into physics and mathematics after years out of school. I invested in getting the Feynman lectures out of regain of interest, and your videos continue to server as a motivational beacon as they help me visualize and think about lectures. Thank you for what you are doing, it really matters at least to me.

[hikingpete]

Wow. Fermions and Bosons make a lot more sense now. This was really helpful. I'll have to watch this again, I think there's a few more details to pick up.

[TheOnlyGeggles]

I love how the intro to chapter one "Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics" of [1] reads

"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hands. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."

Truly the most hardcore intro to a graduate textbook ever.

[1]: David. L. Goodstein, "States of Matter" (New York: Dover, 1975)

[watsonwrote]

After all these years, I finally understand the difference between bosons and fermions. Videos like this make me wish I was 15 years younger and could study this in school again

Here is first paragraph from the book "States of matter" by Goodstein.

1.1 INTRODUCTION: THERMODYNAMICS AND STATISTICAL MECHANICS OF THE PERFECT GAS

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

[ameyakale]

I’m a mechanical engineering graduate and was told to take Stat Mech by my advisor since I was going to work in molecular dynamics. As the only mechanical engineer in a physics class of 40 students, I single-handedly brought the class average down by a full grade 😂
So to you my dear reader I say this:
Have faith in yourself, you got this 💪🏻😂

[meckerhesseausfrankfurt]

Liechtenstein and San Marino are microstates, whereas Canada is a macrostate.

[redaxecat]

My favorite lesson from stat mech is that it is possible, though extremely unlikely, for all the oxygen in the room to be in the corner and you suffocate.

[nuclerpenguins]

Wow this was amazing; I took an intro stat mech/thermodynamics course about 3yr ago and remembered being confused on the distinction between macrostate & microstate.

You and the Spacetime team did a phenomenal job in explaining this and also key fundamentals of particle statistics.

Awesome video! This is one of my favorites (partially biased as a stat mech enjoyer)

[TerryBollinger]

Dr. Matt O’Dowd, thank you for this exceptionally clear and well-done video on the deep importance of statistics to fundamental physics.

[Autmatin]

We do these kind of Macrostate/Microstate calculations all day with colors. You can perceive orange as the pure wavelength or as a combination of red and green light.

[seattlegrrlie]

This is your best video to date. Excellent explanation of the difference between Fermion and Boson particles

[kconger_]

I happened to just complete my graduate-level statistical mechanics course this semester. This video being released the day after my final exam is a traumatic coincidence. Lol

[ignacioflorescenoz]

Funny how just yesterday I was taking an exam in Statistical Mechanics, partition functions are so fun to calculate in most ensembles minus the microcanonical.

[mrdraw]

"The balls are small enough that they never actually hit each other." Animation shows the red ball bouncing off at several other balls. :P

[Plumology]

Suskind has a great stat mec course in Stanford open courses. The field is known as a favorite past time of great theoretical physicists, simple but unpredictable and amazing results from rather simple mathematics. It’s amazing that the field of statistics itself is only a couple hundred years old. It’s not intuitive, and it’s complexity and nuance is an surprise for most students. Lots of fun for life time learners.

[TyronTention]

Stat mech has always been my favorite topic. Had the most fun with this compared to almost any other class in college.

[me]

Statistical mechanics was one of the five most difficult classes I took when I was in undergrad. But I'm so grateful I studied it.

It's cool to see it applied to astrophysics!!