Thermodynamics

ISBN 978-0-9935483-2-1

My text on Thermodynamics, an examination of the mathematical structure behind the subject, was completed and published in the late summer of 2019. It took a little longer than originally planned, partly because of other pressing work.

The book falls into three parts, the first dealing with the historical background (to which the entire first chapter is devoted) and the theoretical development up to and including the concept of the entropy state function, the introduction of which was only properly justified by Caratheodory some fifty years later. The development gives prominence to the non-equilibrium or microscopic model, in contrast to most basic texts which develop only the macroscopic or extensive variables form.

The second part develops the statistical mechanical interpretation of the subject, beginning with a fairly mathematically mature introduction to quantum mechanics, as the Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistical models are crucial here. This part starts with a quick review of probability and information theory.

The third part covers much of the main “stuff” of most undergraduate courses, treating chemical reactions, phase changes and the phase rule, and electrochemistry before closing the book with a chapter on engines, leading up from piston engines through jet engines to rockets.

I’ve avoided being overly polemical in this book; most of thermal physics is fairly well accepted, but I do hint at some reservations about the introduction of concepts that were, especially at the time, not entirely justified by empirical results. In particular, I lay stress on E T Jaynes’s outstanding insight into the true significance of probabilistic concepts in physics.

The final Table of Contents appears below, and, FYI, below that appears the state of it in the summer of 2018!