Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures

I guess the title says it all. This book is really good, both for physicists and engineers. People from other sciences might have a little difficult in some parts, but it still has by far the most comprehensive text in thermodynamics I have ever read.

The book was what I expected and in the condition they described so that was excellent. The only thing I didn't like is they sent it with a carrier I never heard of so I didn't get a tracking number. Then it was eventually delivered by the postal service which was fine. I like the security of having a number to track the shipment.

I gave this a five star review because the item was as described, I have not yet read the book.

This book states that its objective is to provide a "comprehensive introduction" to thermodynamics, but I did not feel that it succeeded in this aim.Thermodynamics is a tricky and subtle subject fraught with peril and points of confusion for the uninitiated. As such, beginners require a treatment that takes its time and proceeds with great care through the very basics of the subject. Unfortunately this book does neither.Rather, the first and second laws are covered within the first three chapters in a rather haphazard, unorganized and at times careless manner, introducing a number of very important points of potential later confusion for the reader not sophisticated enough to catch them. Perhaps most egregiously, this book defines an adiabatic process as one where no heat is transferred to or from a system. Then for the rest of book, it uses this term whenever it is discussing adiabatic reversible processes, but adiabatic does not imply reversible. This is done, for example, on page 74 in the discussion of the Carnot cycle and on page 154. If you do not understand clearly what the last three sentences mean, do not buy this book.Equally horrific was the use of the equation dW = -p*dV even for irreversible processes for which it is, in general, not valid. And certainly not with "p" read as the pressure of the system rather than the environment. This is done, for example, on page 47 in the context of an adiabatic process.A smaller but still irritating point involved the taking logarithms of quantities that are not dimensionless, but the overall point is that one of the things that makes thermodynamics difficult is figuring out which relationships are valid in general and which are valid only in certain situations and exactly what those situations are. This book manages to muddle these issues rather than clarify them.Nonetheless, this book does have much to offer a student with a strong grounding in equilibrium thermodynamics that is capable of making such careful distinctions on their own. There were many topics even in the chapters on equilibrium thermodynamics that I found illuminating, and the last third of the book provides an excellent introduction to the world of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. However, the treatment is precisely that: very introductory; so serious students will certainly need to read additional works to get a good grasp of this area.There are numerous problems, but they are mostly very simple.Finally, this book is quite expensive, but cheaply made. The worst possible combination. The binding had almost completely peeled off the book by the time I finished it.

Got what I wanted.

Excellent textbook that covers both equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Best for chemists and chemical engineers but can be used in any undergraduate thermodynamics course. I used it in such a course for physicists and was pleased with the results.

The authors have composed a treatment of thermodynamics which includes a discussion of many of the historical elements that played a role in the evolution of that discipline. Included in these historical elements are pocket biographies of a number of historical figures such as Carnot, Clausius, Helmholtz, and Planck. Of particular interest is the biography of Sadi Carnot, who lived only from 1796-1832 (p.68). In 1824 Carnot published 600 copies of his now famous treatise on heat engines at his own expense--a work which sadly languished in obscurity until it was unearthed in 1833 by Emile Clapeyron (1799-1864)--one year after Carnot tragically died of cholera. In fact, what we think of as Carnot's work is Clapeyron's transcription of it, which introduced that mathematical arguments and p-V diagrams that are so familiar to us today (p.72). The authors include an excellent discussion of the Carnot cycle/engine and its importance in the development of the concept of entropy.As would be expected from co-author and Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine, given his seminal contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, this aspect of this discipline is properly addressed. Early on (pp.6-7) that authors see fit to address non-equilibrium systems where "the temperature is not uniform but is well defined locally." In response to this non-uniformity in temperature they "define densities of thermodynamic quantities such as energy and entropy."Although this book provides many valuable insights for the advanced undergraduate making his first serious study of thermodynamics, there is a glaring deficiency in the amount of space devoted to statistical thermodynamics--which is given a box that takes up the bottom fifth of page 91 and the top four-fifths of page 92! This lack of coverage of statistical thermodynamics and Boltzmann's contributions may be due to Prigogine's deep awareness of the difficulties in justifying some aspects of this approach--especially given that the author had dedicated much of his career to sorting out these problems. See Prigogine's books "Is future given" and "Order out of Chaos" for more details on the difficulties inherent in Boltzmann's approach.