Dilip Kondepudi

Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures, Second Edition presents a comprehensive introduction to 20th century thermodynamics that can be applied to both equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems, unifying what was traditionally divided into ‘thermodynamics’ and ‘kinetics’ into one theory of irreversible processes. This comprehensive text, suitable for introductory as well as advanced courses on thermodynamics, has been widely used by chemists, physicists, engineers and geologists. Fully revised and expanded, this new edition includes the following updates and features: Includes a completely new chapter on Principles of Statistical Thermodynamics. Presents new material on solar and wind energy flows and energy flows of interest to engineering. Covers new material on self-organization in non-equilibrium systems and the thermodynamics of small systems. Highlights a wide range of applications relevant to students across physical sciences and engineering courses. Introduces students to computational methods using updated Mathematica codes. Includes problem sets to help the reader understand and apply the principles introduced throughout the text. Solutions to exercises and supplementary lecture material provided online at http://sites.google.com/site/modernthermodynamics/. Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures, Second Edition is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students taking a course in thermodynamics.

Thermodynamics is a core part of most science and engineering degree programs. However, the majority of texts that are currently available to students take a “classical” approach, teaching thermodynamics very much as it was presented in the 19th century. This is done generally for historical rather than pedagogical reasons. “Modern” thermodynamics, in contrast, relates entropy, the central concept of thermodynamics, to irreversible processes. An Introduction to Modern Thermodynamics provides the first modern approach to thermodynamics written specifically for a first undergraduate course. It covers the fundamental formalism with some attention given to its history; describes basic applications of the formalism and continues with a number of additional applications that instructors can use according to their particular degree program – these chapters cover thermal radiation, biological systems, nano systems, classical stability theory, and principles of statistical thermodynamics. A wide range of examples appear throughout the book from biological, engineering and atmospheric systems.

This is neither a university treatise nor a textbook, butPrigogine's fundamental work and the basis of all hisphilosophical essays. Thermodynamics ends with severalpages on the subject of time which are a review of theconclusion to The End of Certainty. Each one of the book's twenty chapters concludes withnumerous examples followed by a series of exercises (thecorrect answers are not given), which serve to helpfamiliarise the reader with the theoretical material justpresented. The book begins with an explanation of thefundamental concepts of thermodynamics, followed by thefirst law of thermodynamics, known as the law of energyconservation, and the second law of thermodynamics, known as the law of entropy. After describing theapplication of thermodynamics to chemical reactions, theauthors explain Prigogine's theory of dissipativestructures, which they see as the hieden explanation thatsheds light on and will foster a better understanding ofthermodynamics. Ilya Prigogine received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry forhis research into dissipative structures at the Universityof Austin, Texas. Dilip Kondepudi teaches chemistry at the University ofTexas.