This book offers an easy to read, all-embracing history of thermodynamics. It describes the long development of thermodynamics, from the misunderstood and misinterpreted to the conceptually simple and extremely useful theory that we know today. Coverage identifies not only the famous physicists who developed the field, but also engineers and scientists from other disciplines who helped in the development and spread of thermodynamics as well.

This proceedings contains the invited and contributed papers presented at the conference on the history and foundation of classical thermodynamics. It describes the alternative paradigms and histories of thermodynamics, philosophical foundations and consequences, and classical problems related to the history of thermodynamics. The contents attempt to present a unified approach to the physical, historical and philosophical points of view.

This book is a brief and accessible popular science text intended for a broad audience and of particular interest also to science students and specialists. Using a minimum of mathematics, a number of qualitative and quantitative examples, and clear illustrations, the author explains the science of thermodynamics in its full historical context, focusing on the concepts of energy and its availability and transformation in thermodynamic processes. His ultimate aim is to gain a deep understanding of the second law—the increase of entropy—and its rather disheartening message of a universe descending inexorably into chaos and disorder. It also examines the connection between the second law and why things go wrong in our daily lives. Readers will enhance their science literacy and feel more at home on the science side of author C. P. Snow's celebrated two-culture, science-humanities divide, and hopefully will feel more at home in the universe knowing that the disorder we deal with in our daily lives is not anyone's fault but Nature's.

Essentials of Thermodynamics offers a fresh perspective on classical thermodynamics and its explanation of natural phenomena. It combines fundamental principles with applications to offer an integrated resource for students, teachers and experts alike. The essence of classic texts has been distilled to give a balanced and in-depth treatment, including a detailed history of ideas which explains how thermodynamics evolved without knowledge of the underlying atomic structure of matter. The principles are illustrated by a vast range of applications, such as osmotic pressure, how solids melt and liquids boil, the incredible race to reach absolute zero, and the modern theme of the renormalization group. Topics are handled using a variety of techniques, which helps readers see how concepts such as entropy and free energy can be applied to many situations, and in diverse ways. The book has a large number of solved examples and problems in each chapter, as well as a carefully selected guide to further reading. The treatment of traditional topics like the three laws of thermodynamics, Carnot cycles, Clapeyron equation, phase equilibria, and dilute solutions is considerably more detailed than usual. For example, the chapter on Carnot cycles discusses exotic cases like the photon cycle along with more practical ones like the Otto, Diesel and Rankine cycles. There is a chapter on critical phenomena that is modern and yet highly pedagogical and contains a first principles calculation of the critical exponents of Van der Waals systems. Topics like entropy constants, surface thermodynamics, and superconducting phase transitions are explained in depth while maintaining accessibility for different readers.

The July 1990 conference aimed to review some main aspects of history of thermodynamics, to find alternative paradigms in thermodynamics and to characterize the alternative histories leading to them. This approach demanded the simultaneous application of physical, historical, and philosophical points of view. Thirty-eight contributions are presented along with discussion and concluding remarks. Produced from typescripts. Acidic paper. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR