Given that thermodynamics books are not a rarity on the market, why
would an additional one be useful? The answer is simple: at any level,
thermodynamics is usually taught as a somewhat abstruse discipline where
many students get lost in a maze of difficult concepts. However,
thermodynamics is not as intricate a subject as most people feel. This
book fills a niche between elementary textbooks and mathematically
oriented treatises, and provides readers with a distinct approach to the
subject. As indicated by the title, this book explains thermodynamic
phenomena and concepts in physical terms before proceeding to focus on
the requisite mathematical aspects. It focuses on the effects of
pressure, temperature and chemical composition on thermodynamic
properties and places emphasis on rapidly evolving fields such as
amorphous materials, metastable phases, numerical simulations of
microsystems and high-pressure thermodynamics. Topics like redox
reactions are dealt with in less depth, due to the fact that there is
already much literature available. Without requiring a background in
quantum mechanics, this book also illustrates the main practical
applications of statistical thermodynamics and gives a microscopic
interpretation of temperature, pressure and entropy.
This book is perfect for undergraduate and graduate students who already
have a basic knowledge of thermodynamics and who wish to truly
understand the subject and put it in a broader physical perspective.
The book is aimed not at theoretical physicists, but rather at
practitioners with a variety of backgrounds from physics to biochemistry
for whom thermodynamics is a tool which would be better used if better
understood.
