A Guide to Thermal Physics: from the Fundamentals thru

A Guide to Thermal Physics: from the Fundamentals thru Callen-Level Equilibrium Thermodynamics

NOTE: The e-book edition includes a convenient table of contents on the device or app itself (rather than hot links on the physical contents page inside the book, which would require extra work to scroll back to the beginning). For example, on recent Fire devices, touch under a page to open the menu options, then touch the three horizontal lines (menu icon) in the top left corner of the screen, and a table of contents will open up from the left side of the screen. Then you can easily navigate between chapters. (Alternatively, after touching below the screen, you can swipe to any page on the thumbnails that appear at the bottom.)

AUDIENCE: This thermodynamics textbook is suitable for all students of thermal physics, from the third semester of introductory calculus-based physics thru more advanced coursework in thermodynamics. It provides much greater depth than the coverage of thermal physics in traditional calculus-based physics textbooks, and in this way may be useful to students who are just learning thermal physics. It also provides a solid foundation in the fundamentals and covers both introductory thermal physics (thermal expansion, heat conduction, thermal radiation, ideal gases, and heat engines) and the mathematical formulation of thermodynamics (fundamental relation, Euler and Gibbs-Duhem, thermodynamic potentials, thermodynamic systems, Maxwell relations, and phase transitions) in a more unified way; and in this way may be very helpful to students who are studying undergraduate or graduate level thermodynamics. This textbook also serves as a useful review of thermal physics and thermodynamics for students who have already studied thermodynamics.

CONTENT: The beginning chapters are largely geared toward providing a solid foundation of the fundamental concepts and their relationship with the mathematics. The material from these chapters is intended to serve as a valuable introduction for beginning students and self-learners, and also as a useful review for advanced students. The later chapters grow increasingly in-depth: For example, the treatise of heat conduction discusses the integral in a variety of forms and even compares it to more familiar electrical concepts; the chapter on heat engines derives the Carnot efficiency in general using the entropy change integral, and covers a variety of cycles, including the endoreversible engine; and thermodynamics includes not only the usual thermodynamic square, but also the more general octahedron and cross polytope.

PREREQUISITES: No previous exposure to thermal physics is assumed. The student should be familiar with the techniques of calculus; a brief review of some relevant techniques, such as partial differentiation, is included.

MATHEMATICAL & CONCEPTUAL EMPHASIS: There is much emphasis both on learning the mathematics precisely and understanding the concepts at a deep, precise level. An underlying idea is that students should not guess at concepts, but that concepts are mathematically motivated: Let the equations be your guide.

EXAMPLES: Each chapter includes fully-solved examples to illustrate the main problem-solving strategies.

PRACTICE: The end of each chapter has a good selection of instructive conceptual questions and practice problems.

HINTS & ANSWERS: 100% of the conceptual questions have both hints and answers, since it's crucial to develop a solid understanding of the concepts in order to succeed in physics. Some of the practice problems have answers to help independent students gain confidence by reproducing the same answers, while 100% of the practice problems have hints so that students can see if they are solving the problems correctly.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-09-20
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-09-20
Format	Kindle eBook

A Guide to Thermal Physics: from the Fundamentals thru Callen-Level Equilibrium Thermodynamics

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