The authors look to the laws of thermodynamics for answers to the questions of evolution, ecology, economics, and even life's origin.

Essays on Thermodynamics, Architecture and Beauty, is a book that unfolds arguments and designs around the concept of "thermodynamic beauty". This new aesthetic category opens up new and unexpected directions to the architect's work, connecting architecture and thermodynamics without giving up the tectonic tradition. The compendium will be developed through the concepts of Somatisms, Monsters Assemblage, Verticalism and Thermodynamic Materialism, summarizing design strategies, and opening new territories at the scales of building, public space and landscape.

Thermodynamics is fundamental to university curricula in chemistry, physics, engineering and many life sciences. It is also notoriously difficult for students to understand, learn and apply. This book explains the fundamental concepts with great clarity, and shows how they can be applied to a variety of chemical and life science contexts.

Laurence Belfiore’s unique treatment meshes two mainstream subject areas in chemical engineering: transport phenomena and chemical reactor design. Expressly intended as an extension of Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot’s classic Transport Phenomena, and Froment and Bischoff’s Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design, Second Edition, Belfiore’s unprecedented text explores the synthesis of these two disciplines in a manner the upper undergraduate or graduate reader can readily grasp. Transport Phenomena for Chemical Reactor Design approaches the design of chemical reactors from microscopic heat and mass transfer principles. It includes simultaneous consideration of kinetics and heat transfer, both critical to the performance of real chemical reactors. Complementary topics in transport phenomena and thermodynamics that provide support for chemical reactor analysis are covered, including: Fluid dynamics in the creeping and potential flow regimes around solid spheres and gas bubbles The corresponding mass transfer problems that employ velocity profiles, derived in the book’s fluid dynamics chapter, to calculate interphase heat and mass transfer coefficients Heat capacities of ideal gases via statistical thermodynamics to calculate Prandtl numbers Thermodynamic stability criteria for homogeneous mixtures that reveal that binary molecular diffusion coefficients must be positive In addition to its comprehensive treatment, the text also contains 484 problems and ninety-six detailed solutions to assist in the exploration of the subject. Graduate and advanced undergraduate chemical engineering students, professors, and researchers will appreciate the vision, innovation, and practical application of Laurence Belfiore’s Transport Phenomena for Chemical Reactor Design.

Presents an updated, full-color, second edition on thermodynamics, providing a structured approach to this subject and a wealth of new problems.

A preeminent physicist unveils a field-defining theory of the origins and purpose of life. Why are we alive? Most things in the universe aren't. And everything that is alive traces back to things that, puzzlingly, weren't. For centuries, the scientific question of life's origins has confounded us. But in Every Life Is on Fire, physicist Jeremy England argues that the answer has been under our noses the whole time, deep within the laws of thermodynamics. England explains how, counterintuitively, the very same forces that tend to tear things apart assembled the first living systems. But how life began isn't just a scientific question. We ask it because we want to know what it really means to be alive. So England, an ordained rabbi, uses his theory to examine how, if at all, science helps us find purpose in a vast and mysterious universe. In the tradition of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Every Life Is on Fire is a profound testament to how something can come from nothing.