  Thermodynamic formulas for investigating systems with density and/or
temperature dependent particle masses are generally derived from the
fundamental derivation equality of thermodynamics. Various problems in the
previous treatments are discussed and modified. Properties of strange quark
matter in bulk and strangelets at both zero and finite temperature are then
calculated based on the new thermodynamic formulas with a new quark mass
scaling, which indicates that low mass strangelets near beta equilibrium are
multi-quark states with an anti-strange quark, such as the pentaquark
(u^2d^2\bar{s}) for baryon nmber 1 and the octaquark (u^4d^3\bar{s}) for
dibaryon etc.
