Entropy And Its Physical Meaning

This text gives students a clear and easily understood introduction to entropy - a central concept in thermodynamics, but one which is often regarded as the most difficult to grasp. Professor Dugdale first presents a classical and historical view of entropy, looking in detail at the scientists who developed the concept, and at how they arrived at their ideas. This is followed by a statistical treatment which provides a more physical portrait of entropy, relating it to disorder and showing how physical and chemical systems tend to states of order at low temperatures. Dugdale includes here a brief account of some of the more intriguing manifestations of order in properties such as superconductivity and superfluidity.Entropy and Its Physical Meaning also includes a number of exercises which can be used for both self- learning and class work. It is intended to provide a complete understanding of the concept of entropy, making it valuable reading for undergraduates in physics, physical sciences and engineering, and for students studying thermodynamics within other science courses such as meteorology, biology and medicine.

This text gives students a clear and easily understood introduction to entropy - a central concept in thermodynamics, but one which is often regarded as the most difficult to grasp. Professor Dugdale first presents a classical and historical view of entropy, looking in detail at the scientists who developed the concept, and at how they arrived at their ideas. This is followed by a statistical treatment which provides a more physical portrait of entropy, relating it to disorder and showing how physical and chemical systems tend to states of order at low temperatures. Dugdale includes here a brief account of some of the more intriguing manifestations of order in properties such as superconductivity and superfluidity.Entropy and Its Physical Meaning also includes a number of exercises which can be used for both self- learning and class work. It is intended to provide a complete understanding of the concept of entropy, making it valuable reading for undergraduates in physics, physical sciences and engineering, and for students studying thermodynamics within other science courses such as meteorology, biology and medicine.

Excerpt from Physical Significance of Entropy or of the Second Law This article is intended for those students of engineering who already have some elementary knowledge of thermodynamics. It is intended to clear up a difficulty that has beset every earnest beginner of this subject. The difficulty is not one of application to engineering problems, although here too there have been widespread misconceptions,1 for the expressions developed by clausius are simple, have long been known and much used by engineers and physicists. The difficulty is rather as to the ultimate physical meaning of entropy. This term has long been known as a sort of property of the state of the body, has long been surmised to be of essentially a statistical nature, but with it all there was a sense that it was a sort of mathematical fiction, that it was somehow unreal and elusive, so it is no wonder that in certain engineering quarters it was dubbed the ghostly quantity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This book presents a clear and readable description of one of the most mysterious concepts of physics: Entropy. It contains a self-learning kit that guides the reader in understanding the concepts of entropy. In the first part, the reader is asked to play the familiar twenty-Question game. Once the reader feels comfortable with playing this game and acquires proficiency in playing the game effectively (intelligently), he or she will be able to capture the elusive and used-to-be mysterious concept of entropy. There will be no more speculative or arbitrary interpretations, nor “older” or “modern” views of entropy. This book will guide readers in choosing their own interpretation of entropy. Video intro on the Bestsellers on Entropy by Arieh Ben-Naim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5fOsKyOlHw Request Inspection Copy Contents:Introduction: From Heat Engines to Disorder, Information Spreading, Freedom, and More…Forget about Entropy for a While, Let us Go and Play iGamesThe Astounding Emergence of the Entropy of a Classical Ideal Gas out of Shannon's Measure of InformationExamples and Their Interpretations. Challenges for any Descriptor of EntropyFinally, Let Us Discuss the Most Mysterious Second Law of Thermodynamics Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students in chemistry and physics, academics and lay persons.

Consisting of separate cases organized by chapter and divided into independent sections, this is no ordinary history of science book. Between the Earth and the Heavens is an episodic history of modern physical sciences covering the chronological development of physics, chemistry and astronomy since about 1860. Integrating historical authenticity and modern scientific knowledge, the cases within deal with the often surprising connections between science done in the laboratory (physics, chemistry) and science based on observation (astronomy, cosmology).Between the Earth and the Heavens presupposes an interest in and a certain knowledge of the physical sciences, but it is written for non-specialists and includes only a limited number of equations which are all clearly explained in simple terms. For readers who wish to delve further, the book is fully documented and ends with a bibliography of cited quotations and other relevant sources.