This fully updated and expanded new edition continues to provide the most readable, concise, and easy-to-follow introduction to thermal physics. While maintaining the style of the original work, the book now covers statistical mechanics and incorporates worked examples systematically throughout the text. It also includes more problems and essential updates, such as discussions on superconductivity, magnetism, Bose-Einstein condensation, and climate change. Anyone needing to acquire an intuitive understanding of thermodynamics from first principles will find this third edition indispensable. Andrew Rex is professor of physics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. He is author of several textbooks and the popular science book, Commonly Asked Questions in Physics.

Concise yet thorough, accessible, authoritative, and affordable. These are the hallmarks of books in the remarkable Physics and its Applications series. Thermodynamics is an essential part of any physical sciences education, but it is so full of pitfalls and subtleties, that many students fail to appreciate its elegance and power. In Thermal Physics, the author emphasizes understanding the basic ideas and shows how the important thermodynamics results can be simply obtained from the fundamental relations without getting lost in a maze of partial differentials. In this second edition, Dr. Finn incorporated new sections on scales of temperature, availability, the degradation of energy, and lattice defects. The text contains ample illustrations and examples of applications of thermodynamics in physics, engineering, and chemistry.

New sections on scales of temperature, availability, the degredation of energy and lattice defects accompany this volume which emphasizes understanding the basic ideas of thermodynamics. The text includes examples of the application of thermodynamics to chemistry, physics and engineering.

This fully updated and expanded new edition continues to provide the most readable, concise, and easy-to-follow introduction to thermal physics. While maintaining the style of the original work, the book now covers statistical mechanics and incorporates worked examples systematically throughout the text. It also covers more problems, and incorporates some essential updates, such as discussions on superconductivity, magnetism, Bose-Einstein condensation, and climate change. Anyone who needs to acquire an intuitive understanding of thermodynamics from the first principles will find this third edition indispensable. Selling Points • Provides the most concise and accessible introduction to thermodynamics starting from first principles, with many more worked examples and problems. • Incorporates statistical mechanics in two brand-new chapters. • Systematically incorporates more worked examples after introducing a new concept to show what the results mean numerically. • Continues to address the subtleties in a way unmatched by any other text, for topics such as the meaning of thermodynamic functions. • Offers a significant update on areas such as superconductivity, magnetism, Bose-Einstein condensation, climate change, and physics of information. Andrew Rex is a professor of physics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. He earned a BA in physics at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1977 and a PhD in physics at the University of Virginia in 1982. At Virginia he worked under the direction of Bascom S. Deaver Jr on the development of new superconducting materials. After completing requirements for his PhD, he joined the faculty at Puget Sound. Dr Rex’s primary research interest is in the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics. He has published research articles and, jointly with Harvey Leff, two comprehensive monographs on the subject of Maxwell’s demon (1990, 2003). Dr Rex has coauthored several widely used textbooks—Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers (1993, 2000, 2006, 2013, 2021), Integrated Physics and Calculus (2000), and Essential College Physics (2010, 2021)—and the popular science book Commonly Asked Questions in Physics, also published by Taylor & Francis/CRC Press.

In this revised and enlarged second edition, Tony Guénault provides a clear and refreshingly readable introduction to statistical physics. The treatment itself is self-contained and concentrates on an understanding of the physical ideas, without requiring a high level of mathematical sophistication. The book adopts a straightforward quantum approach to statistical averaging from the outset. The initial part of the book is geared towards explaining the equilibrium properties of a simple isolated assembly of particles. The treatment of gases gives full coverage to Maxwell-Boltzmann, Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics.

Designed by two MIT professors, this authoritative text discusses basic concepts and applications in detail, emphasizing generality, definitions, and logical consistency. More than 300 solved problems cover realistic energy systems and processes.

Covering the theory of computation, information and communications, the physical aspects of computation, and the physical limits of computers, this text is based on the notes taken by one of its editors, Tony Hey, on a lecture course on computation given b