Customer Reviews

Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures

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Until now, books on non-equilibrium thermodynamics were quite advanced, courses on the subject were given separately from other thermodynamics courses, and thermodynamics in general was viewed as a collection of three -more or less individual- subfields: classical thermodynamics, statistical thermodynamics and finally non-equilibrium thermodynamics. I've waited a long time for an introductory text that presented a unified and modern approach to the field.

Kondepudi and Prigogine come close in writing such a book. It is very accessible, well written, and it tries very hard to present thermodynamics as one unified discipline.

Points are scored with the attention given to historical developments, the incorporation of non-equilibrium concepts right from the start (the 'unified' approach), the clear presentations of the various notions (some of which are conceptually quite difficult, such as the classical description of entropy), and the quality of the problems.

Weaknesses are the somewhat cheap looking lay-out, the absence of key ideas from statistical thermodynamics (which are really helpful in understanding non-equilibrium concepts, and are essential to anyone who needs to learn thermodynamics; this omission is unforgivable) and the poor editing job (many typos, sentences constructed in a weird way).

All in all, this is probably the first affordable introductory text of thermodynamics that incorporates non-equilibrium ideas from the very start, and it certainly does justice to what is known as 'classical' thermodynamics or 'non-equilibrium' thermodynamics. The lack of 'statistical' thermodynamics is a severe error of judgement by the authors; as a consequence, the book -good as it is- does NOT describe thermodynamics as a whole; students will still need to follow a separate course in statistical thermodynamics. Given the importance of the topic, the instructiveness of its reasoning and its power to make the various thermodynamic pieces fall together, the omission of 'statistical' thermodynamics is a mystery.

Other than that, the book is a delight. For the missing statistical info, I recommend the excellent book by Frederi

This is an excellent book, simple, rational, with the relevant historical context...
I was teaching a thermodynamics course for biologists and was quite tired of the standard stuff when a collegue recommend this book to me, he had the impression that it was a good book and was about to review it for his own course (physics students).
We decidded to adopt the book for both courses (we use only the first part with is intended for this use).

The best book on thermodynamics I have seen so far.

Kondepudi and Prigogine's textbook is distinguishable by a link between the books of equilibrium non-statistical thermodynamics and the monographs in non-equilibrium non-statistical thermodynamics. A minor lack of generality on the development of the whole formal system is apparent, but an advantage in that the text is practical and complete. In my opinion, there is no clear logic connection between subjects in equilibrium and non- equilibrium. For example, the derivation of the Clausius' inequality from the entropic balance equation is lacking. The historic references and the portraits of the pioneers in the field of thermodynamics are remarkable. The chapter dedicated to the dissipative structures is basic, but this is compensated with a very good introduction to the linear and non-linear non-equilibrium regimes. The treatment of affinity is admirable, more so by the way it sticks out with the influence of the Brussels school! A noteworthy criticism is the confusion created by the inter-use of the terms "current density" and "flux" in the study of non-equilibrium processes. I like the statement of the third law. The footnote discussion of the local character of the balance equations with regards to Einstein's relativistic theory is also very interesting.

Prigogine and Kondepudi have done an excellent job developing the basic concepts of thermodynamics through an overview of the historical developments - very postmodern for a science textbook! They present all relevant material to then develop non-equilibrium thermodynamics through the use of many examples.

I found their manner of developing the concepts and equations to be very clear and concise. The mathematics are well-developed although a thorough background in engineering calculus is required. In fact, for many of the classical equilibrium concepts they have the clearest development I have ever read; certainly the section on Maxwell's relations is far superior to my old book by Callen.

Many different applications including chemical and electro-optic, are developed for non-equilibrium methods. For all sections the authors have listed references and suggested readings to make it easy for further explorations.

I wished this textbook had been around when I went through engineering...

A very good review of this book is available on line at the link given in the first comment, below.

As Prigogine explained in The End of Certainty, one of his driving interests in life was to understand nonequilibrium systems, in part because each of us IS such a system. That interest probably explains why (as the review mentioned above put it),

"One of the unusual features of this book is that it begins by explicitly discussing both nonuniform and nonequilibrium systems. While most of the traditional topics of a course in chemical thermodynamics are included in this book, these applications are treated in the context of a more general formalism that can be used to discuss both linear and nonlinear nonequilibrium systems."

I think this approach will help the student avoid getting locked into the mindset of "Thermo is only about equilibrium" that held back so many of my own generation. I wish this had been my textbook when I was in college. It's given me some ideas for how to handle some phenomena that I now investigate just for fun.

Rather than write more, I'll refer prospective customers to the on-line review.

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.

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.

Regarding this book, I have the following thoughts:
1. This book is highly comprehensive compared to other texts on thermodynamics as it cover both classical and non-equilibrium thermodynamics which has been recently developed. Moreover, the book's contents are organised in a chronological manner i.e., in accord with the progress and development in the field of thermodynamics and from simple to more complicated concepts and ideas. Comprehensiveness means it provides more breadth rather than depth which is suitable and adequate for undergraduate level.

2. In contrast to the former reviewer's opinion, I do not have any objection to the exclusion of statistical thermodynamics in this text by the authors as both classical and non-equilibrium thermodynamics deal primarily with macroscopic properties of the system under investigation. On the other hand, statistical mechanics focuses more on the relationship between microscopic properties and macroscopic ones and how can we infer the latter from the former. This kind of treatments can be easily found in several good texts on statistical thermodynamics or statistical mechanics.

3. In my opinion, this book is more suitable for physical science (or natural science) students as it covers materials that are beyond, and may not be directly related to, engineering applications (i.e., dissipative structures and self-organisation, etc.). However, several excellent texts on thermodynamics for engineering can be easily found elsewhere (e.g., Cengel and Boles, 2002, etc.).

I woudldn't hesitate to recommend this book to the readers at undergraduate level who take thermodynamics course within natural and physical sciences.

Doy Sundarasaradula
August 8, 2009