Customer Reviews

The Dynamics of Heat

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This thermodynamics textbook is different from the typical treatment. Instead of developing entropy as an abstract mathematical concept loosely connected with "disorder", Fuchs views entropy as a fluid, much like we view charge or momentum as a fluid. It is an odd fluid to be sure, since it is not conserved and is created in dissipative processes. Nevertheless, this approach allows us to bring much of our intuition of fluids to bear on thermo problems. As a result, we can know entropy in both a mathematical sense and an intuitive sense, and thus be more comfortable with the concept. The analogy to a fluid turns out to be a pretty good one. For instance, consider the comparison to electric charge. Currents of charge are driven by gradients of a potential. Currents of entropy are driven by gradients in temperature. Currents of energy are carried along with currents of charge. Likewise, currents of energy are carried with currents of entropy. Once you start thinking in these terms, problems that seemed very complex are suddenly straightforward.

The book covers a wide range of topics in thermodynamics, plus there are chapters on related topics. There are many detailed example problems throughout the text, which help drive home the concepts, and there are many problems at the end of each chapter (without solutions). It looks like the book is designed primarily to be a textbook for undergraduate thermodynamics classes, but I bought it for self study and found it very readable and enjoyable.

As mechanical engineer who had to struggle through all the thermos and the like, all I can say that I learned what it is all about after reading this book some years after my graduation (in my real education period).

Whenever in doubt this is my reference.