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Title: Thermodynamics: Foundations and Applications by Elias P. Gyftopoulos, Gian Paolo Beretta ISBN: 0-02-348455-1 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 01 February, 1991 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $82.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (8 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: A truly revolutionary approach.
Comment: If you are seriously interested in thermodynamics, you have to read this book. Most textbooks treat temperature and entropy as ultimately indefinable, while the definitions in this text are so elegantly logical that they will quite literally blow your mind and force you to rethink everything you have been taught on the subject. I recommend this book not only to students of thermodynamics, but also to anyone who loves science and was never satisfied with definitions of temperature or entropy. This is easily the best textbook I have ever read.

Rating: 5
Summary: A rare, unique, much needed textbook
Comment: Having learned first-handed from one of the authors and used it several times as a textbook in a graduate course, I am convinced that this is one of the best available thermodynamic textbooks and its influence will last for a long time. In addition to the removal of the vicious circles and ambiguous definitions presented in most thermo books, the definition of entropy is particularly enlightening. Entropy is defined as a property of any system (large or small) at any state (equilibrium or nonequilibrium). By repeatedly exercising the first law and second law of thermodynamics to solve engineering problems, entropy is not a monster to the students any more, rather, it is a fundamental property associated with all thermodynamic systems. The purpose of this book is not to give recipes for a few typical problems but to provide the foundation of thermodynamics to the readers, so that they can use their own knowledge to find the solution for many known and unknown engineering problems. For this reason, it is not the easiest textbook for use in a thermo class, and frustrations could occur at the beginning of using this book. At the end of each semester, however, most students felt that they had gained a unique experience and learned much more from this textbook than other books. I hope to see this book republished soon. If revisions are to be made, my suggestions would be for the authors to consider (1) adding more homework problems, (2) incorporating the international temperature scale of 1990 (ITS-90), and (3) using the new steam table (IAPWS-IF97).

Rating: 5
Summary: An Intellectually Rigorous Presentation of Thermodynamics
Comment: As a teacher I am greatful to the authors, Gyftopoulos and Beretta, for providing me (and other teachers of thermodynamics ) with this novel, logically consistent and enlightening approach to thermodynamics. I use their exposition as the foundation of my teaching in both my graduate and undergraduate engineering courses in thermodynamics. I start with an expanded version of Chapter 14 of the book. This Chapter gives a concise summary of the thermodynamic concepts that constitute the basic structure of thermodynamics. Actually, the authors have a paper, found in the Proceedings ASME, Vo. 266, pp 206-217 (1993), in which they outline their presentation of the basic concepts in a sequence of 10 lectures. In that sequence, as in the book, there is a seamless flow from one concept to the other, without arbitrary statements, or non-rigorous derivations and misconceptions, as in most of the thermodynamic textbooks. For instance, unlike others who insist on talking about heat from page one, in spite of the fact that the concept of heat cannot be understood without the Second Law, Gyfropoulos and Beretta introduce heat towards the end of their exposition of basic concepts, where I believe it actually belongs. The above paper summarizes the order of introduction of concepts which I copy here:

"System (constituents and parameters); properties; state; energy(without heat and work) and energy balance; classification of states in terms of time evolution; existence of stable equilibrium states; available energy;entropy (without heat and temperature) of any state (equilibrium or not) and entropy balance; properties of stable equilibrium states; temperature in terms of energy and entropy;chemical potentials; pressure; work; heat; applications of balances"

My experience is that with this exposition of concepts the students end up with a better understanding of the structure of thermodynamics and a clear mental picture of the framework of basic concepts on which they can attach the application treatments they subsequently learn. I share the entusiasm of the two reviewers from Blacksburg about the book and its presentation of the entropy and the energy-entropy diagrams and I would like to add one more element: the treatment of the concept of reservoirs and the resulting extremely simple derivation of the Carnot Coefficient.