Description: An understanding of thermal physics is crucial to much of modern physics, chemistry and engineering. This book provides a modern introduction to the main principles that are foundational to thermal physics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The key concepts are carefully presented in a clear way, and new ideas are illustrated with copious worked examples as well as a description of the historical background to their discovery. Applications are presented to subjects as diverse as stellar astrophysics, information and communication theory, condensed matter physics and climate change. Each chapter concludes with detailed exercises.
Customer Reviews
Review Summary: The best textbook I ever had (so far)
Date: 2008-11-19
Details: I love this book. Its funny, clear, exciting, and a good read.
The concepts actually make sense. And it is all cut up into sizable little chapters, with important concepts summarized at the end of each chapter.
This is the best textbook I've ever had.
Review Summary: Statistical Thermodynamics
Date: 2008-04-30
Details: The advantage of the text is that its an easy read. The chapters are short, the mathematics is elementary (multi-variable calculus is the supremum of what one should know) and the concepts are readily available to one willing to stop and think (as opposed to one who wishes to be fed directly).
However, there are points where the author discusses topics repeatedly at an almost childish level. Moreover, there exists many errors within the text. Though most are minor and sort of obvious, they are rather annoying. The end of chapter problems are mostly mathematical manipulations. There are of course problems that test one's conceptual understanding of the material; however, the subject is mathematical in nature and the concepts are relatively babyish.
Reading through chapters 1-30, my opinion of the text is that its a great buy if one wishes to see the subject through a mathematical lens (which is hopefully the case).
Review Summary: What were they thinking?
Date: 2008-02-08
Details: Where do I begin? We had switched to using this textbook for our second course in statistical mechanics at the undergraduate level; I wish we hadn't. The chapters are short which makes reading them easy. However, because of the short chapters, I don't feel that it goes as in depth as I would like it to. Perhaps it could explain things a lot better if it didn't use the word "hence" in every sentence. The authors should have written this book with a thesaurus.
One of the biggest flaws is that the book is filled with many mistakes. There is an errata for this book, but only covers a tiny fraction of the mistakes. Many of the end of chapter problems are stated unclear, and have many errors. For example, it asks you to derive something, and the equation it wants you to derive is wrong. In the appendix, it gives mathematical derivations to some special functions, like the volume of a hypersphere, and the derivation is wrong! Also, the end of chapter problems are nothing more than mathematical manipulations and derivations. None of the questions help develop a concept for the material.
I recommend not getting this book.
out of 3 Reviews
