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I study physical chemistry on my own and I have to decide in which order I learn the following topics These are my topics:

Statistical Thermodynamics (especially entropy, partition function, Boltzmann factor..)/ Maxwells Relations/ Thermodynamic Potentials/ Chemical potential/ Colligative properties/ Kinetics/ Electrochemistry/

What is your opinion, your preferred order

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    $\begingroup$ Opinion-based questions are not a good fit for this site. Maybe you want to ask what the typical textbook order is, or some other version of the question that is fact-based rather than opinion-based. $\endgroup$
    – Karsten ♦
    Feb 11, 2020 at 14:44
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    $\begingroup$ It depends on the textbook you have. Most textbooks are written in roughly the order they are intended to be read. $\endgroup$
    – Buck Thorn ♦
    Feb 11, 2020 at 17:51
  • $\begingroup$ I´m sure one could have different opinions on this, but I doubt that it would make much sense to stray from the tried path that basically all textbooks and profs follow. $\endgroup$
    – Karl
    Feb 11, 2020 at 18:43
  • $\begingroup$ I think it depends on what your 'end goal' , that is what you expect yourself to do by the end of studying it, based on that you can drop off of topics and save a lot of time. $\endgroup$
    – tryst with freedom
    Feb 13, 2020 at 9:03

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Take any common PC book, and follow the order given therein.

It usually starts with ideal gas equation, enthalpy, entropy, Gibbs, chemical potential, i.e. plain thermodynamics. (that lecture was called PC1 at my alma mater)

On top of that, you can add kinetics and statistics (PC4a,b) and electrochemistry(PC5) at will, those do not depend on each other much. The basics of kinetics and electrochemistry we learned earlier however, I think in the introductory lecture for inorganic chemistry.

I´m not saying one couldn´t start with any of the latter subjects instead of plain thermodynamics, but have never heard of that being done and no idea how it would work. Would be a whole new approach to (self)teaching physical chemistry. ;)

Inbetween, you should however allow yourself a good dose of quantum mechanics (PC2&3), because that greatly improves understanding of the concepts and esp. their limitations. Some books and schools also start with QM (PC[zero]), I guess for that exact reason.

Again, I´m not saying this couldn´t be rearranged, but the above is the way most books and lectures do it. I guess that with statistics etc., you would have to stop the subject all the time to introduce another concept from basic thermodynamics, and also all the rest of chemistry remains very vague and descriptive if you don´t have a good understanding of gas laws, phase transitions, energy and temperature.

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    $\begingroup$ You see we had a very thorough 3 yr indoctrination in physical chemistry. ;) Followed by two more lectures on macromolecular physical chemistrys, where everything looks slightly new and different. ;) $\endgroup$
    – Karl
    Feb 11, 2020 at 18:31

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