Home / Science / Popular Science / Popular Physics / Thermodynamic Weirdness: From Fahrenheit to Clausius

Thermodynamic Weirdness: From Fahrenheit to Clausius

AUTHOR
Price
€17.00
€18.90 -10%
Upon request
Dispatched within 15 - 25 days.

Add to wishlist

An account of the concepts and intellectual structure of classical thermodynamics that reveals the subject's simplicity and coherence.

Students of physics, chemistry, and engineering are taught classical thermodynamics through its methods—a “problems first” approach that neglects the subject's concepts and intellectual structure. In Thermodynamic Weirdness, Don Lemons fills this gap, offering a nonmathematical account of the ideas of classical thermodynamics in all its non-Newtonian “weirdness.” By emphasizing the ideas and their relationship to one another, Lemons reveals the simplicity and coherence of classical thermodynamics.

Lemons presents concepts in an order that is both chronological and logical, mapping the rise and fall of ideas in such a way that the ideas that were abandoned illuminate the ideas that took their place. Selections from primary sources, including writings by Daniel Fahrenheit, Antoine Lavoisier, James Joule, and others, appear at the end of most chapters. Lemons covers the invention of temperature; heat as a form of motion or as a material fluid; Carnot's analysis of heat engines; William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and his two definitions of absolute temperature; and energy as the mechanical equivalent of heat. He explains early versions of the first and second laws of thermodynamics; entropy and the law of entropy non-decrease; the differing views of Lord Kelvin and Rudolf Clausius on the fate of the universe; the zeroth and third laws of thermodynamics; and Einstein's assessment of classical thermodynamics as “the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown.”

Author: Lemons Don
Publisher: MIT PRESS
Pages: 190
ISBN: 9780262538947
Cover: Paperback
Edition Number: 1
Release Year: 2020
Don S. Lemons is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas.

You may also like

Newsletter

Subscribe to the newsletter to be the first to receive our new releases and offers
Your account Your wishlist

This website uses cookies

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.