Read more
Zusatztext "Hoorah! Professor Luscombe has done a wonderful service to graduate students and younger physicists who find themselves clueless when they encounter a subtlety of thermodynamics because their undergraduate course in "Thermal Physics" raced through thermodynamics to get to statistical mechanics." — Prof. Andrew Zangwill , Georgia Institue of Technology "The subject of thermodynamics is a difficult topic to grasp even by those who use it frequently. This upper-level treatment, Thermodynamics , helps fill in the details that many introductory textbooks do not, and should not, provide. Oftentimes in this subject, as students especially, one is required to press the " I believe" button in order to avoid a lengthy and scattered search required for piecing together the fundamental question in physics, "Why?", regarding the thermodynamic question at hand. This book, on the contrary, compiles many of those answers together in a step-by-step fashion and explains them in modern vernacular. While by no means is this a complete description of thermodynamics, nor does it claim to be, it provides a theoretical background and framework from which thermodynamics originates. For anyone looking to find a textbook that will fill in the gaps of prior teachings and provide the tools for understanding the fundamentals of thermodynamics, this textbook is a phenomenal resource to have available." — Blake McCracken , Experimental Physicist "Luscombe’s Thermodynamics is an exciting addition to the field. The first thing you notice when opening the book is the engaging writing style. This is a textbook that does not read like a textbook. It makes you feel that the author is speaking with you directly, either one-to-one or in a small seminar. The structure of the book is sound. Its approach is to give equal weight and importance to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, or put another way, to the macrosco Informationen zum Autor James H. Luscombe is Professor of Physics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1983. After post-doctoral positions at the University of Toronto and Iowa State University, he joined the Research Laboratory of Texas Instruments, where he worked on the development of nanoelectronic devices, before joining the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994. He was Chair of the Department of Physics between 2003 and 2009. He teaches a wide variety of topics, including general relativity, statistical mechanics, mathematical methods, and quantum computation. Klappentext This book provides an accessible yet thorough introduction to thermodynamics, suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Modern applications of thermodynamics are included throughout-something not offered to the same degree by existing texts in the field. Zusammenfassung This book provides an accessible yet thorough introduction to thermodynamics, suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Modern applications of thermodynamics are included throughout—something not offered to the same degree by existing texts in the field. Inhaltsverzeichnis Thermodynamic Basics. 1. Concepts of thermodynamics. 2 Second law of thermodynamics Direction of heat flow.3. Entropy. 4. Thermodynamic potentials The four ways to say energy. 5. Thermodynamics of radiation. 6. Phase and chemical equilibrium. 7 Statistical entropy From micro to macro. 8. The third law - You can’t get to T = 0. 9. To this point. Additional Topics in Thermodynamics. 10. Caratheodory formulation. 11. Negative absolute temperature. 12. Thermodynamics of information. 13. Black hole thermodynamics. 14. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics. 16.Superconductors and superfluids. Epilogue: Where to now? ...
