eBook Thermodynamics: Foundations and Applications ePub

Jeronashe

The book by Gyftopoulos and Beretta could definitely be recommended both to the students in different fields, where a correct usage of thermodynamics is anyway of much importance and to the already qualified specialists as well !

This is not only a list of "foundations and applications" which is just all the time traveling from one handbook to another - but, in addition, this book is containing a systematic description of the authors' own insights into a number of very difficult and debatable problems in the field.

And it is just the latter point that ought to render the book in question so valuable !

Jediathain

very nice book, illustrating in a nice way, was much useful for me, thank you, would love it more if hard covered

I_LOVE_228

It's a textbook for a required class. Nothing exciting.

Villo

Good

Nilabor

I commend the authors for the boldness and creativity of their new theory. They say they have newly defined terms (e.g.for entropy) and laws (the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics; after dismissing statistical mechanics from theoretical foundations) that do away with the circularity and subjectivity of current doctrines. However they do not address the primary issue that the 2nd law was derived to address without introducing their own circularities, namely why are real processes irreversible or why are most macroscopic systems irreversible?. One can further question whether their results are useful and are they right as I will briefly look at below. Some of their quotes are from their related articles available on the net.

1.Circularity. The authors correctly state that "the laws of thermodynamics do not require that entropy must always increase." Boltzman developed statistical mechanics to try and address the fundamental issue of why it is just most likely that entropy increases in the real world. He seemed to have failed because as the authors also correctly state, "the second law cannot be derived from the laws of mechanics." However what do they do? They state theorems - (i) if a weight process is reversible, the entropy remains invariant and (ii) if a weight process is irreversible, the entropy increases." This sounds like a tautology? Let's see how they define it -"A process is reversible if both the system and its environment can be restored to their respective initial states. A process is irreversible if [it cannot]." This seems circular so far? The authors then redefine the 2nd law - "Among all the states of a system with given values of energy, the amounts of constituents, and the parameters, there exists one and only one stable equilibrium state." They then dismiss perpetual motion machines(PMM) and Maxwell's Demon with short shrift - "In view of [our] well defined concepts [they looked a bit circular to me!] it is clear that no work can be extracted from a reservoir because work interaction, by definition, involves only energy exchange." They say their prohibition of PMM is not circular because it is only a theorem of their restatements of the 1st and 2nd laws. I do agree that the presumed PMM impossibilty is usually invoked in a circular manner by assuming the conventional 2nd law is true. However by reducing it to a theorem I'm not sure the issue has been resolved. They say that "Starting from a non-equilibrium state or from an equilibrium state that is not stable, experience shows that energy can be transferred out of the system and affect a mechancial effect without leaving any other net changes in the state of the environment. In contrast starting from a stable equilibrium state, experience shows that a system cannot affect the mechanical effect just cited." We have now switched from tautology to experimental fact? But so does Clausius's definition of entropy as a state function difference: dS >= Q/T where Q is the heat transfer. They actually agree with this formula! They just derive it differently by designing an absolute entropy for all particles of matter. How would they answer the fundamental question 'why are real processes irreversible'? Would they say for instance because the universe is in a nonequilibrium or unstable? I don't know because they do not respond to queries but that answer only begs the question. Their observations that "the laws of thermodynamics do not require that processes be reversible or irreversible" and "do not require an asymmetry of time" also avoids the issue, unless they they disagree that most macro systems are irreversible? It is generally agreed that the entropy of the universe is increasing and that creates a great mystery about the initial conditions. Penrose explains in his new book The Road to Reality that most authors ignore gravity and that means the initial conditions must have been exceedly unique. The authors say their absolute entropy is extensive but gravity denies extensivity at large scales. The authors' work is at best woefully incomplete and fails to identify crucial issues.

2. Is their theory useful as a substitute for conventional physics? They introduce new terms and definitions but in the end they agree with Clausius's formula for entropy as noted above. The textbook values for entropy are safe. They derive an absolute value for entropy but create a new mystery, what is this new attribute that was also created in the beginning? Pure accident as opposed to a relation between particles? They say thermodynamics does not mandate irreversibility but they don't even address the fundamental issue for real processes and likely they cannot with their circular approach.

3. Are they right? They propose a unified theory with quantum mechanics. They say "Whereas the entropies of statistical mechanics are thought to represent ultimate disorder if the system is in a stable equilibrium state, the entropy of the unified theory represents perfect order for such a state." It's difficult to say, but their theory has been refused publication and their theory on disorder vs disorder is buried in an obscure journal and the authors, as I said, do not respond to queries. This leads one to suspect they are more interested in pedantic arguments about theorems and definitions than real world problems. It seems ironic that it is Boltzman's statistical mechanics, which the authors dismiss, that was derived to address the very issue they ignore; Why does the observed universe appear to be irreversible? There is no irony however in simply ignoring the problem.

Androrim

As a teacher I am greatful to the authors, Gyftopoulos and Beretta, for providing me (and other teachers of thermodynamics ) with this novel, logically consistent and enlightening approach to thermodynamics. I use their exposition as the foundation of my teaching in both my graduate and undergraduate engineering courses in thermodynamics. I start with an expanded version of Chapter 14 of the book. This Chapter gives a concise summary of the thermodynamic concepts that constitute the basic structure of thermodynamics. Actually, the authors have a paper, found in the Proceedings ASME, Vo. 266, pp 206-217 (1993), in which they outline their presentation of the basic concepts in a sequence of 10 lectures. In that sequence, as in the book, there is a seamless flow from one concept to the other, without arbitrary statements, or non-rigorous derivations and misconceptions, as in most of the thermodynamic textbooks. For instance, unlike others who insist on talking about heat from page one, in spite of the fact that the concept of heat cannot be understood without the Second Law, Gyfropoulos and Beretta introduce heat towards the end of their exposition of basic concepts, where I believe it actually belongs. The above paper summarizes the order of introduction of concepts which I copy here:
"System (constituents and parameters); properties; state; energy(without heat and work) and energy balance; classification of states in terms of time evolution; existence of stable equilibrium states; available energy;entropy (without heat and temperature) of any state (equilibrium or not) and entropy balance; properties of stable equilibrium states; temperature in terms of energy and entropy;chemical potentials; pressure; work; heat; applications of balances"
My experience is that with this exposition of concepts the students end up with a better understanding of the structure of thermodynamics and a clear mental picture of the framework of basic concepts on which they can attach the application treatments they subsequently learn. I share the entusiasm of the two reviewers from Blacksburg about the book and its presentation of the entropy and the energy-entropy diagrams and I would like to add one more element: the treatment of the concept of reservoirs and the resulting extremely simple derivation of the Carnot Coefficient.