In our daily life, our intuition for how the world works is based on the behaviour of systems which are large – they consist of an enormous number of microscopic constituents. But how is the behaviour of such systems in the laboratory related to the properties of their smallest parts? Statistical physics is the area of physics which answers this question.

I will also touch upon other interesting and related issues, such as the second law of thermodynamics, the arrow of time and microscopic machines.