Entropy

Teachers and college students: here is a clear, friendly intro. to thermodynamics and statistical mechaniocs. (Don't be deceived by the title--it is not a specialist tract on entropy, that is only a convenient hook for author to hang a title.) Prof. Dugdale has a fine instinct for picking out the important highlights at the college-level. A quick and easy read (compared to standard textbooks).

Should be ideal as refresher for the teacher and as textbook supplement for the student. (Probably it is too brief for a textbook for a one-quarter course, unless teacher supplements with extra material and adds a few more problems at chapter ends.)

I was grateful that there were only a few problems at chapter ends -- and not too hard, either; this made it less guilt-inducing for me just to read the book w/o doing the problems, since time did not permit the latter. My understanding did not suffer noticably from this "casual" approach.

There are original touches throughout, including a most fresh discussion of the second law enlivened with extracts from Carnot's own discussion of his ideal engine. Historical asides such as these are a rare item in a Physics book and reading this I began to see what a treat I've been missing all these years!

The book has 3 sections: Part I on macro thermo, Part 2 on stat. mech, and a short Part 3 on low temperatures. A well-balanced presentation, and at an affordable price.

I used this book ,along with others, to teach undergraduate thermodynamics. It's extremely well written and provides a clear introduction to (Clausius's derivation of) entropy and the second law via calculus on revesible processes called Carnot cycles. I can recommend the first part of the book without reservation.

I used this book for getting a basic understanding of Entropy which was vague and ambiguous in other books I studied. And the book gives a clear picture of how entropy generation can be used productively. I rate this book as the best for begining with entropy. I loved the subjectb of entropy only after using this book.

This slim volume provides a technical investigation into the foundations of thermodynamics, including the ties between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, and the fundamental probabilistic assumptions that are needed (ergodic theory is explicitly pushed to the side). Though the book is technically detailed, it does not assume too much knowledge on the part of the reader; a quick crash course on the mathematical machinery of quantum mechanics is included in the appendix, for example. As a final note, after one has read this book it is worth looking up a critical review of it by Huw Price, in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

Daniel talks with subtileness about a concept that can make us travel against science and religion. I think that all Thermodynamics book in the world should have a preface,(or the entire book), written by this guy. He mixes poetry, Math, Chemistry and religion. You may ask yourself: What kind of poetry can I find on Enthropy? Well, now I know that if you can't, you know nothing about Entropy. Anyway, an excellent book to read ant think and you better believe me... You're going to think a lot.

I am a Ph.D. student in chemistry studying a self-assembling protein. I don't know why I didn't find this book years ago, I may have overlooked it because of the age of the text and concerns that it was too specialized, but it is exactly what I needed all along: a basic, biophysical description of the nature of self-assembly reactions that are entropically driven (as most are: tobacco mosaic virus, actin, sickle cell anemia, etc). The book is mathematical but not at the expense of conceptual content. Suitable for anyone well grounded in basic thermodynamics and physical chemistry. Tobacco mosaic virus is used as a prototype but the principles and techniques are widely applicable and four of the ten chapters discuss other proteins. With the emerging field of self-assembling nanotubes, books like this merit more attention in the future.

This could quite possibly be the most ground breaking work of physics of the 20th century. Time will tell on its lasting impact, but in the very least it is an EXCELLENT example of someone working outside the box but sticking to the most logical conclusions when 'not hindered by the box'.
The idea of dimensions has been one that has puzzled me since I was a young child. It seemed so simple when I first heard about it, until I began to think about it. 3 dimensions; we live in three dimensions. And the fourth dimension, it is time. And what is a dimension anyway? I began to come to the conclusion that dimensions were something that rules over everything. It is a spatial and temporal co-ordinate orginization system. But where the first 3 spatial dimensions SEEM so simple, the temporal dimension SEEMS to make no sense. There is something more to the dimension problem than we had any idea of. And idea of many current physicists (scientific philosophers) that there are many (even thousands) of other dimensions in the universe that explain the mathematical anomallies that they are coming across is ludicris. The next step in human evolution is apparent, and it is in explaining the temporal dimension and in finding the next dimension on top of that.
Another concept which has bothered me since early childhood is the idea of intelligence. Do we really know what intelligence is? And what is its relationship with order?
Arie is able to take this two concepts to their logical interlocking. He applies Entropy to the problem, to me the most puzzling phenomenon outside of paradox and the placebo effect. And he does so in a straightforward, easy to read manner. Read this book, and read How Real Is Real? by Paul Watzlawick and tell me your universe hasn't been changed.

Self-Organization is not the function given to a neural net (although they have taken it) used for pattern recognition, nor is it a cult somewhere in Germany. After following Haken's work for 6-8 years it is good to see a summary of sorts. Haken was working with self-organizing similarities in the 80's when unification ideas were rampant. Haken uses this same analogy by equating the basic form to stochastic differential equations. It is somewhat easier to approach the differential equation as a dynamical system driven by random vector fields of which the Ito form (stuff Kalman filters are made of) is a special case. Without going into martingales Brownian motion ergodic theorems of Markovian processes Haken does give a convincing argument for what he terms MIP (max. information principle) and information gain in the system. Linguistically converted this means that the process may be likened to a diffusion process with thermodynamic stuff. This paves the way for the transfer of information from one organization structure diffusion (in the wave) front to another. It seems to me, however, that a much simpler proof would be; show the parallel between Haken's basic form and the Lax form of an evolution equation. Establish relationship to Hirota's derivatives. Usually represented and manifested as the Korteweg-deVrie equations the polynomials groups describing the equation easily convert to Hiroto derivatives. Show fundamental relationship to n-solitons and vertex operators, establish relationship to Heisenberg and Clifford algebras, show Fock representation of Bosons using Maya diagrams, show Boson-Fermion correspondence. Complex variables, infinite dimensional algebras, Fermions, and Bosons; The principle of superposition does not apply to non-linear waves, despite that there exists exact solutions containing an arbitrary number of parameters suggesting an infinite dimensional transformation group acting on spaces of solutions of integrable systems (Reaction-diffusion as one type shock waves as another). Because of this self-symmetry in scales of complex polynomials, transformational methods work well. If waves are information densities and an increase in entropy is an increase of information Hiroto's derivatives would give the mathematical link showing the degrees of information transfer between types of diffusion front (waves) and another. The similarity of scales, the repeating nature, then transfer of one wave front (diffusion) through another without annihilation.

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Maxwell's Demon 2 is one of the best books I've found in the field - the authors address key issues in a clear and engaging manner. This is an excellent and well-organized reference book and includes any number of original papers which are difficult to find through other sources. Highly recommended.