Customer Reviews

Equilibrium Thermodynamics

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This is a beautifully clear into to thermo, treated purely as macroscopic phenomenology.

Equilibrium thermodynamics (or thermostatics, as some call it) has manifold applications-in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, engineering, etc. The author is a physicist, and selects his material accordingly. However, he does devote the penultimate chapter , ch.11 ("Systems of Several Components") to some chemistry-type applications including chemical reactions in ideal gases.

Prior to Adkins, most thermo books I studied merged thermo with statistical mechanics. Entropy treated the purely macroscopic or "thermo way" appeared to me abstract & unintuitive, and cycles with heat engines seemed an awkward import from engineering.
The author entirely avoids leaning on statistical mechanics for the main thrust of his arguments, but makes a few side remarks about stat mech on occasion. By keeping the thermo pure, he teaches the reader its power and beauty. Everyone should learn thermo this way, and Adkins is a superb guide for the mature physicist. He achieves the unusual feat of providing careful, rigorous arguments while keeping the narrative smoothly flowing and readable. In other words, he honors the intellectual integrity so essential in this discipline, but never stifles the reader with pedantry or excessive detail.

The problems are sometimes challenging, but with sustained effort, I could "crack" most of those I tried. It was only in chap. 11 that I started to find the problems too difficult, and that may well reflect my own lack of prior exposure in this area.

(By the way, Adkins derives entropy with heat engines and Carnot cycles, but those who like a less torturous or "gizmo-ridden" route to entropy will be pleased that he also includes Caratheodory's abstract argument.)

Bravo to the author for creating this first-rate textbook. I cannot praise it too highly.

After many arduous sessions with other thermodynamics texts, I finally found a clear and intuitive explanation of the fundamentals in this text. I have been referring to this text as necessary for many years. -- Daniel Matuszak, NovoCatalysis

This item arrived within a reasonable amount of time and in very good condition. I am pleased and satisfied.