Advanced Classical Thermodynamics

During the spring semester of 2026, I was asked by Dr. Hongtao Zhong, an assistant professor in MSU's Mechanical Engineering Department, to substitute for him while he was traveling for a conference for his class: ME 810: Advanced Classical Thermodynamics.

Specifically, he asked for a survey on how to calculate a plasma's thermodynamic properties in a particle-based computational method. I discussed how Particle-in-Cell codes worked, and provided a case-study example of industry-standard, bounded plasma device codebase: xpdp1. Furthermore, the lecture enacted active-learning in a qualitative demo of how to interact with thermodynamic diagnostics during a simulation.