## Fun With General Physics

I’m sure to let my interest in the Internet Archive version of Landau, Akhiezer, and Lifshiz General Physics wane soon enough. But for now I’m still digging around and finding stuff that delights me. For example, here, from the end of section 58 (Solids and Liquids):

As the temperature decreases, the specific heat of a solid also decreases and tends to zero at absolute zero. This is a consequence of a remarkable general theorem (called Nernst’s theorem), according to which, at sufficiently low temperatures, any quantity representing a property of a solid or liquid becomes independent of temperature. In particular, as absolute zero is approached, the energy and enthalpy of a body no longer depend on the temperature; the specific heats cp and cV, which are the derivatives of these quantities with respect to temperature, therefore tend to zero.

It also follows from Nernst’s theorem that, as $T \rightarrow 0$, the coefficient of thermal expansion tends to zero, since the volume of the body ceases to depend on the temperature.