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Very Short Introductions #226
The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction
The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal--everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. Written by Peter Atkins, one of the world's leading authorities on thermodynamics, this powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics. Guiding the reader a step at a time, Atkins begins with Zeroth (so named because the first two laws were well established before scientists realized that a third law, relating to temperature, should precede them--hence the jocular name zeroth), and proceeds through the First, Second, and Third Laws, offering a clear account of concepts such as the availability of work and the conservation of energy. Atkins ranges from the fascinating theory of entropy (revealing how its unstoppable rise constitutes the engine of the universe), through the concept of free energy, and to the brink, and then beyond the brink, of absolute zero.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
199 people are currently reading
2090 people want to read
About the author
Peter Atkins
204 books204 followersPeter William Atkins is an English chemist and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford. He retired in 2007. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics. Atkins is also the author of a number of popular science books, including Atkins' Molecules, Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science and On Being.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
December 30, 2016
My notes while reading the book:
4 laws (0 to 3). Temperature, energy, entropy and absolute zero
Developed during the steam engine age, when scientists weren't sure the atom was real.
Chapter 1: The zeroth law
Temperature. System and surroundings. Open, closed and isolated systems. Pressure and mechanical equilibrium. Temperature and thermal equilibrium. Classical thermodynamics. Statistical thermodynamics. Beta is inversely proportional to energy. K is Boltzmann constant.
K * Beta = 1 / T
Beta would have been the better one used for temperature if not for the historical coincidence that Celsius and Fehrenheit preceded Boltzmann.
Chapter 2: The first law of thermodynamics: conservation of energy
Work. Heat is the process of transfer of energy. It's not a fluid.
Internal energy (U).
A state function: A property that depends only on the current state of the system and is independent of how that state was prepared (e.g. internal energy and temperature).
The energy is an isolated system is constant.
Reversibility. Reversible system generate maximum work.
Enthalpy (h)
H = U + pv
From Enthalpy we can get work.
Enthalpy of vaporization and fusion. Latent energy as a term is not used anymore.
Heat capacity. Change with temperature.
Chapter 3: The second law, increase of entropy
Hustory of its development. Carno. Kelvin. Clawsius. The same law in different forms. Entropy (s). Engines must have cold sinks in order to convert energy to work. Cold sinks have relatively low entropy. Heat moves spontaneously from high to low temperatures.
Molecular interpretation of entropy
Boltzmann:
S = k log w
Residual entropy. Degenerate solids. Many ground states (lowest energy)
Chapter 4: free energy, availability of work
Helmholds energy
Gibbs energy
G = a + pv
Thermodynamics of phase transitions. Lower Gibbs energy at that temperature = will be that phase (spontaneously at atm pressure).
Sublimation. Solid to vapor immediately. Dry ice.
Chapter 5: The third law: the unattainablility of zero
No new thermodynamic function.
Perfect gas cannot exist.
Applies for cyclic processes only.
Negative absolute temperature? Beta more natural than K or T for temperature. Smooth as it approaches zero, unlike the jumps in other units.
The meaning of negative temperatures in Kelvin.
Conclusion
Summary. Mentions the topics he omitted.
I didn't understand many things, especially when equations were involved. You can't be expected to understand that in an audiobook while driving in KSA! Author style isn't that easy to understand either.
4 laws (0 to 3). Temperature, energy, entropy and absolute zero
Developed during the steam engine age, when scientists weren't sure the atom was real.
Chapter 1: The zeroth law
Temperature. System and surroundings. Open, closed and isolated systems. Pressure and mechanical equilibrium. Temperature and thermal equilibrium. Classical thermodynamics. Statistical thermodynamics. Beta is inversely proportional to energy. K is Boltzmann constant.
K * Beta = 1 / T
Beta would have been the better one used for temperature if not for the historical coincidence that Celsius and Fehrenheit preceded Boltzmann.
Chapter 2: The first law of thermodynamics: conservation of energy
Work. Heat is the process of transfer of energy. It's not a fluid.
Internal energy (U).
A state function: A property that depends only on the current state of the system and is independent of how that state was prepared (e.g. internal energy and temperature).
The energy is an isolated system is constant.
Reversibility. Reversible system generate maximum work.
Enthalpy (h)
H = U + pv
From Enthalpy we can get work.
Enthalpy of vaporization and fusion. Latent energy as a term is not used anymore.
Heat capacity. Change with temperature.
Chapter 3: The second law, increase of entropy
Hustory of its development. Carno. Kelvin. Clawsius. The same law in different forms. Entropy (s). Engines must have cold sinks in order to convert energy to work. Cold sinks have relatively low entropy. Heat moves spontaneously from high to low temperatures.
Molecular interpretation of entropy
Boltzmann:
S = k log w
Residual entropy. Degenerate solids. Many ground states (lowest energy)
Chapter 4: free energy, availability of work
Helmholds energy
Gibbs energy
G = a + pv
Thermodynamics of phase transitions. Lower Gibbs energy at that temperature = will be that phase (spontaneously at atm pressure).
Sublimation. Solid to vapor immediately. Dry ice.
Chapter 5: The third law: the unattainablility of zero
No new thermodynamic function.
Perfect gas cannot exist.
Applies for cyclic processes only.
Negative absolute temperature? Beta more natural than K or T for temperature. Smooth as it approaches zero, unlike the jumps in other units.
The meaning of negative temperatures in Kelvin.
Conclusion
Summary. Mentions the topics he omitted.
I didn't understand many things, especially when equations were involved. You can't be expected to understand that in an audiobook while driving in KSA! Author style isn't that easy to understand either.
August 24, 2012
The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction by Peter W. Atkins
“The Laws of Thermodynamics" is a very solid and practical book that covers the core concepts of thermodynamics. Accomplished author of many science books and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, does the wonderful A Very Short Introduction series justice by providing readers with an accessible account of the four laws of thermodynamics. This well-written 144 page-book is composed of the following five chapters: 1. The zeroth law: The concept of temperature, 2. The first law: The conservation of energy, 3. The second law: The increase in entropy, 4. Free energy: The availability of work and 5. The third law: The unattainability of zero.
Positives:
1. A professionally written book. Good science writing.
2. The book is sound and concise.
3. Does a great job of summarizing the properties of energy and its transformation from one form to another.
4. Though intended for the masses this book does not short change the reader.
5. Goes over every one of the four laws of thermodynamics in adequate detail.
6. Effective use of charts and illustrations.
7. The difference between dynamics and thermodynamics.
8. Terms are well defined: temperature, gas, work, heat, enthalpy, entropy, etc...
9. Name dropping...the scientific greats.
10. Entropy and disorder.
11. The importance of Gibbs energy in chemistry and in the field of bioenergetics.
12. The process of sublimation.
13. Absolute zero...cool.
14. The Boltzmann distribution.
15. The process of adiabatic demagnetization.
16. A further reading section.
Negatives:
1. This is not as basic as the introductory series implies. Make no bones about it, thermodynamics is complex and even at its most basic it can be difficult.
2. You must grasp the terms early on to progress effectively through the book.
3. More quantitative than expected.
4. No links to further reading material.
In summary, this is a very good science book. The “A Very Short Introduction” series is a really good one intended for those who want to gain a basic understanding of a given topic in a concise manner. Professor Atkins succeeds in providing the reader the core concepts of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is a complex topic so even at its basic it will test the resolve of some to get through it. It's good concise science writing on a challenging topic. If you are looking to get a basic understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, this is a good book to start. I recommend it.
Further suggestions: "Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science" by the same author, "Thermodynamics for Dummies" by Mike Pauken, "Science Matters" by Robert M. Hazen, "Why Does E=mc2?" by Brian Cox, "Entropy Demystified" by Arieh Ben-Naim, and "For the Love of Physics" by Walter Lewin.
“The Laws of Thermodynamics" is a very solid and practical book that covers the core concepts of thermodynamics. Accomplished author of many science books and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, does the wonderful A Very Short Introduction series justice by providing readers with an accessible account of the four laws of thermodynamics. This well-written 144 page-book is composed of the following five chapters: 1. The zeroth law: The concept of temperature, 2. The first law: The conservation of energy, 3. The second law: The increase in entropy, 4. Free energy: The availability of work and 5. The third law: The unattainability of zero.
Positives:
1. A professionally written book. Good science writing.
2. The book is sound and concise.
3. Does a great job of summarizing the properties of energy and its transformation from one form to another.
4. Though intended for the masses this book does not short change the reader.
5. Goes over every one of the four laws of thermodynamics in adequate detail.
6. Effective use of charts and illustrations.
7. The difference between dynamics and thermodynamics.
8. Terms are well defined: temperature, gas, work, heat, enthalpy, entropy, etc...
9. Name dropping...the scientific greats.
10. Entropy and disorder.
11. The importance of Gibbs energy in chemistry and in the field of bioenergetics.
12. The process of sublimation.
13. Absolute zero...cool.
14. The Boltzmann distribution.
15. The process of adiabatic demagnetization.
16. A further reading section.
Negatives:
1. This is not as basic as the introductory series implies. Make no bones about it, thermodynamics is complex and even at its most basic it can be difficult.
2. You must grasp the terms early on to progress effectively through the book.
3. More quantitative than expected.
4. No links to further reading material.
In summary, this is a very good science book. The “A Very Short Introduction” series is a really good one intended for those who want to gain a basic understanding of a given topic in a concise manner. Professor Atkins succeeds in providing the reader the core concepts of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is a complex topic so even at its basic it will test the resolve of some to get through it. It's good concise science writing on a challenging topic. If you are looking to get a basic understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, this is a good book to start. I recommend it.
Further suggestions: "Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science" by the same author, "Thermodynamics for Dummies" by Mike Pauken, "Science Matters" by Robert M. Hazen, "Why Does E=mc2?" by Brian Cox, "Entropy Demystified" by Arieh Ben-Naim, and "For the Love of Physics" by Walter Lewin.
September 5, 2023
I can't say this captured my attention the entire time but I came away with a better understanding of heat and basic thermodynamics, which I've never studied that I can recall!
November 11, 2018
Temperature is the parameter that tells us the most probable distribution of populations of molecules over the available states of a system at equilibrium.
The first law of thermodynamics is generally thought to be the least demanding to grasp, for it is an extension of the law of conservation of energy, that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
The internal energy of an isolated system is constant. That is the first law of thermodynamics, or at least one statement of it, for the law comes in many equivalent forms.
In thermodynamics heat is not an entity or even a form of energy: heat is a mode of transfer of energy. It is not a form of energy, or a fluid of some kind, or anything of any kind. Heat is the transfer of energy by virtue of a temperature difference. Heat is the name of a process, not the name of an entity.
Work is the transfer of energy that makes use of the uniform motion of atoms in the surroundings.
When I gave lectures on thermodynamics to an undergraduate chemistry audience I often began by saying that no other scientific law has contributed more to the liberation of the human spirit than the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law has a reputation for being recondite, notoriously difficult, and a litmus test of scientific literacy. Indeed, the novelist and former chemist C. P. Snow is famous for having asserted in his The Two Cultures that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics is equivalent to never having read a work by Shakespeare.
To fix our ideas in the concrete at an early stage it will be helpful throughout this account to bear in mind that whereas U is a measure of the quantity of energy that a system possesses, S is a measure of the quality of that energy: low entropy means high quality; high entropy means low quality.
The entropy of the universe increases in the course of any spontaneous change.
We have assumed without comment that there is only one state of lowest energy; one ground state, in which case W =1 at T =0 and the entropy at that temperature is zero.
This empirical observation is the content of the phenomenological version of the third law of thermodynamics: no finite sequence of cyclic processes can succeed in cooling a body to absolute zero.
The entropy of all perfectly crystalline substances is zero at T = 0.
At first sight, the third law is important only to that very tiny section of humanity struggling to beat the low-temperature record (which, incidentally, currently stands at 0.000 000 000 1 K for solids and at about 0.000 000 000 5 K for gases—when molecules travel so slowly that it takes 30 s for them to travel an inch).
The entropy has reached its maximum value, a value which according to Boltzmann’s formula is proportional to log 2.
The first law of thermodynamics is generally thought to be the least demanding to grasp, for it is an extension of the law of conservation of energy, that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
The internal energy of an isolated system is constant. That is the first law of thermodynamics, or at least one statement of it, for the law comes in many equivalent forms.
In thermodynamics heat is not an entity or even a form of energy: heat is a mode of transfer of energy. It is not a form of energy, or a fluid of some kind, or anything of any kind. Heat is the transfer of energy by virtue of a temperature difference. Heat is the name of a process, not the name of an entity.
Work is the transfer of energy that makes use of the uniform motion of atoms in the surroundings.
When I gave lectures on thermodynamics to an undergraduate chemistry audience I often began by saying that no other scientific law has contributed more to the liberation of the human spirit than the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law has a reputation for being recondite, notoriously difficult, and a litmus test of scientific literacy. Indeed, the novelist and former chemist C. P. Snow is famous for having asserted in his The Two Cultures that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics is equivalent to never having read a work by Shakespeare.
To fix our ideas in the concrete at an early stage it will be helpful throughout this account to bear in mind that whereas U is a measure of the quantity of energy that a system possesses, S is a measure of the quality of that energy: low entropy means high quality; high entropy means low quality.
The entropy of the universe increases in the course of any spontaneous change.
We have assumed without comment that there is only one state of lowest energy; one ground state, in which case W =1 at T =0 and the entropy at that temperature is zero.
This empirical observation is the content of the phenomenological version of the third law of thermodynamics: no finite sequence of cyclic processes can succeed in cooling a body to absolute zero.
The entropy of all perfectly crystalline substances is zero at T = 0.
At first sight, the third law is important only to that very tiny section of humanity struggling to beat the low-temperature record (which, incidentally, currently stands at 0.000 000 000 1 K for solids and at about 0.000 000 000 5 K for gases—when molecules travel so slowly that it takes 30 s for them to travel an inch).
The entropy has reached its maximum value, a value which according to Boltzmann’s formula is proportional to log 2.
December 16, 2017
Peter Atkins, as he seems to be known for his popular science books rather than the P W Atkins of his textbooks, is as good a popular science writer as he is a textbook writer. He manages the balance between keeping things simple (or at least not too technical) while not over-simplifying to the point of inaccuracy. This book about the Laws of Thermodynamics is part of the Oxford University Press series A Very Short Introduction, and like the others I have read in the series lives up to that description; it gives you the basics and in a very accessible way.
May 7, 2025
Decent refresher on thermodynamics for someone who has learned it to some degree before, but wouldn't make for a great 'introduction' on its own (which, besides its title as part of a series, it doesn't claim to be). There are some good analogies here that give a better intuition for certain concepts, other analogies are weaker. The figures are also a mixed bag.
While I appreciated the format of each chapter—beginning with an observation of a process on bulk matter before zooming into a molecular or atomic explanation—I found that the author sometimes had trouble linking the two views together coherently. Throughout he'll often mix a classical view with a quantum view, without properly delineating them for the sake of the reader.
I get that the purpose of the Very Short Introduction series is to be kept lean, but I feel that a lot of explanatory power could have been added at the small cost of ~10 additional pages worth of clarification throughout. I'm confident in the author's writing abilities for the purposes of communication, and I may pick up his longer book on the 2nd Law specifically. I think this book's shortcomings are more on the editorial aspect of being constrained to such a short page count.
While I appreciated the format of each chapter—beginning with an observation of a process on bulk matter before zooming into a molecular or atomic explanation—I found that the author sometimes had trouble linking the two views together coherently. Throughout he'll often mix a classical view with a quantum view, without properly delineating them for the sake of the reader.
I get that the purpose of the Very Short Introduction series is to be kept lean, but I feel that a lot of explanatory power could have been added at the small cost of ~10 additional pages worth of clarification throughout. I'm confident in the author's writing abilities for the purposes of communication, and I may pick up his longer book on the 2nd Law specifically. I think this book's shortcomings are more on the editorial aspect of being constrained to such a short page count.
Read
December 6, 2023I started reading this a long time ago, when I was taking a history of science course focused on the Victorian period, and was reading (for an assignment) selected chapters from Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin by Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, which details some of the main figures who formulated the laws of thermodynamics (weirdly a lot of conservative evangelical Calvinists and quasi-creationists involved). I abandoned the book after finishing my assignment, but picked it up again after reading about Julius Robert Mayer (a German chemist and physician) in John Bellamy Foster's "Marx's Ecology." Mayer was a critic of Leibig's vitalist tendencies in the blooming field of metabolic sciences, and also formulated the conservation of energy a year before James Joule did (in the form of the mechanical equivalent of heat). I was curious if this book would at all get into energy flows that historically preoccupied those studying metabolism, and it did very briefly on three separate occasions in Chapter 4 (p. 62, 72, 76), mainly the context of free energy and the availability of work.
Weirdly as an electrical engineering student I was not required to take a thermodynamics course, even though it used to be mandatory for most engineering students. I really regret missing that back then, and I feel it would've been really useful as a master's student (during which my advisor, who specialized in renewable energy, had an academic background in mechanical engineering). One very tangential aside here, is that many Cubans I both met (a couple weeks ago) and have seen in documentaries, who work in tourism or sell trinkets in markets in Havana, have degrees in engineering. Like many leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who studied or practiced engineering, this is true of Cuba too, whose current leader Miguel Diaz-Canel studied electronics engineering, and taught it as a professor. Joel Suarez, who I had the chance to meet at the Martin Luther King Center (CMLK) in Cuba, also studied engineering before coming to work at the CMLK. In his student days he was involved in the Student Christian Movement of Cuba (MEC de Cuba), and mentioned many of the students in it during its founding were Marxists and communists, but were not able to join the Communist Party back then because they were Christians (this has since changed). Joel Suarez wanted to study philosophy, but the communist government, as practical people thought people should be educated in more useful disciplines, so he reluctantly studied engineering, before returning back to study religion later on. Anyway... thermodynamics, yeah?
Weirdly as an electrical engineering student I was not required to take a thermodynamics course, even though it used to be mandatory for most engineering students. I really regret missing that back then, and I feel it would've been really useful as a master's student (during which my advisor, who specialized in renewable energy, had an academic background in mechanical engineering). One very tangential aside here, is that many Cubans I both met (a couple weeks ago) and have seen in documentaries, who work in tourism or sell trinkets in markets in Havana, have degrees in engineering. Like many leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who studied or practiced engineering, this is true of Cuba too, whose current leader Miguel Diaz-Canel studied electronics engineering, and taught it as a professor. Joel Suarez, who I had the chance to meet at the Martin Luther King Center (CMLK) in Cuba, also studied engineering before coming to work at the CMLK. In his student days he was involved in the Student Christian Movement of Cuba (MEC de Cuba), and mentioned many of the students in it during its founding were Marxists and communists, but were not able to join the Communist Party back then because they were Christians (this has since changed). Joel Suarez wanted to study philosophy, but the communist government, as practical people thought people should be educated in more useful disciplines, so he reluctantly studied engineering, before returning back to study religion later on. Anyway... thermodynamics, yeah?
June 30, 2022
The book is about as pleasant an introduction to a difficult subject as might be possible. I don't imagine the subject of thermodynamics is easy for many people, perhaps not even for many people who have studied it. If you were actually going to sit for a test on the book's content, you'd probably need to read it several times, unless you are unusually intelligent.
The difficulty of thermodynamics for most people is evident in the popularity of beliefs that contradict it. Evolution did not equip many people with the acumen to understand the thermodynamic principles that make evolution possible. For example, alternative medicine quacks prattle on about "meridians" in the body with "energy" flows that can be harnessed to heal diseases. They don't use the word "energy" in a way any real scientist recognizes, such as the thing that obeys a conservation law, and must therefore result in waste heat appearing somewhere. Atkins, however, in this book ignores the various religionists and superstitionists who deny thermodynamics, save for the would-be inventors of perpetual motion machines. The desire to violate natural law for personal benefit - the endless quest to get something for nothing - motivates quite a bit of human activity, from every religion that claims prayer changes things, to the positive-thinking movement (imagine it, and it's yours), to the water-fueled car, and so on. Thermodynamics might be one of the most denied sciences, and therefore one of the most important to master. It could save trillions in wasted effort and expenditure on things that not only do not work, but cannot work.
Just don't expect to read this one on the edge of your seat. The science that teaches us there are no free lunches is itself a bit of a non-free lunch.
The difficulty of thermodynamics for most people is evident in the popularity of beliefs that contradict it. Evolution did not equip many people with the acumen to understand the thermodynamic principles that make evolution possible. For example, alternative medicine quacks prattle on about "meridians" in the body with "energy" flows that can be harnessed to heal diseases. They don't use the word "energy" in a way any real scientist recognizes, such as the thing that obeys a conservation law, and must therefore result in waste heat appearing somewhere. Atkins, however, in this book ignores the various religionists and superstitionists who deny thermodynamics, save for the would-be inventors of perpetual motion machines. The desire to violate natural law for personal benefit - the endless quest to get something for nothing - motivates quite a bit of human activity, from every religion that claims prayer changes things, to the positive-thinking movement (imagine it, and it's yours), to the water-fueled car, and so on. Thermodynamics might be one of the most denied sciences, and therefore one of the most important to master. It could save trillions in wasted effort and expenditure on things that not only do not work, but cannot work.
Just don't expect to read this one on the edge of your seat. The science that teaches us there are no free lunches is itself a bit of a non-free lunch.
October 28, 2020
This very short introduction gives a good and effective introduction to the laws of thermodynamics, its implications and applications. It’s rather short, but not lacking depth in my opinion. I especially liked the part where Atkins compared our human body to a steam engine, he basically calls everything a steam engine.
In Atkins‘ own words: „What I have sought to cover are the core concepts, concepts that effectively sprang from the steam engine but reach out to embrace the unfolding of a thought. This little mighty handful of laws truly drive the universe, touching and illuminating everything we know.“
In Atkins‘ own words: „What I have sought to cover are the core concepts, concepts that effectively sprang from the steam engine but reach out to embrace the unfolding of a thought. This little mighty handful of laws truly drive the universe, touching and illuminating everything we know.“
September 26, 2021
Трохи заскладна для первинного ознайомлення, але дуже корисна, якщо хочеш розібратися у законах термодинаміки без введення понять з теорії інформації. Автор взагалі починає з температури та пояснює все по ходу на прикладі двигуна внутрішнього згоряння. Все по суті, але не сказала б, що ця книга для розваги, і вона не для тих, хто боїться формул.
April 10, 2017
Interesting and important but a bit too much chemistry and formulas for my taste (apparently). I missed some more real world applications.
August 2, 2023
Read in one sitting very cool!!
February 24, 2026
Uma excelente introdução aos conceitos básicos da Termodinâmica alimentados pelo desejo de compreender as leis.
January 28, 2025
Yes I studied physics at both high school and university and learned about the laws of thermodynamics but I thought it was time that I took a refresher. Hence I found the Blinkist summary of this book and thought that it might do the job. I’m only half convinced. I’ve never heard of the “Zeroeth law” of thermodynamics before. But I guess it’s a thing. And, whilst the examples are child’s play really, I still find it difficult to get my head around a concept like enthalapy. So I haven’t totally achieved what I set out to do.....Maybe I need to read the whole book instead of just the summary. But only after writing this review did I realise two things: First that it was written by Peter Atkins and I already have a couple of books of his...certainly one on molecules which is fascinating. And the second point is that this is a summary of one of the "Short Introduction" books which are already a summary of the filed. I think I really need to read, at least, this "Short Introduction". Anyway, my attempt to draw out the essential points from the blankest version of the book is as follows:
“Thermodynamics concerns itself with systems. What we mean by this is: anything that has boundaries. ....Beyond those boundaries, we find the system’s surroundings. This could be a bath of cool water in a laboratory or the atmosphere around a system. Together, a system and its surroundings make up the universe.....A flask without a lid. That’s an “open system.”
With mechanical equilibrium........picture two metal cylinders next to one another. Both are fully sealed except for a horizontal tube joining them together like a walkway between two buildings. This tube contains two pistons held together by a rigid rod......Now add another cylinder C to the A cylinder. If C and A and A and B are in mechanical equilibrium, then C and B will also be in mechanical equilibrium.
The first law of thermodynamics–law zero or, as physicists call it, the zeroth law....We’ll begin by introducing a new concept: thermal equilibrium.....Think back to our cylinders, A and another so that their sides are touching. What will happen next? If no change then they are in equilibrium; Add a third cylinder, C. ....If A and B and A and C are in thermal equilibrium, then B and C will also be in thermal equilibrium.....Equal pressure, we concluded, means mechanical equilibrium.....The zeroth law allows us to infer that there must be a similar property determining thermal equilibrium.
Zooming in [to the level of groups of atoms] takes us beyond classical thermodynamics,
Instead, we’ll be dealing with statistical thermodynamics.......According to the Boltzmann distribution, all atom groups are distributed exponentially across their available states. This essentially means that the largest group will be clustered in the lowest possible energy state–the so-called ground state.....The Boltzmann distribution also states that groups of atoms move to higher energy states as their temperature increases.....Put simply, temperature is the parameter that tells us how atoms are distributed across energy states.
Work is a mechanical concept.......Here’s the basic definition: work is motion against an opposing force. Think of a pulley lifting a heavy object, for example....All systems are capable of doing work. This capacity is called energy.....Unless a system is completely isolated, some of its work will be transferred to its surroundings......The name for the process by which energy is transferred from a system to its surroundings or vice versa is called heat.
as long as no work is done on an isolated system, the internal energy of that system will always remain constant. This is the first law of thermodynamics.
Steam engines essentially have three components.
1. A hot energy source
2. A device that transforms that heat into work
3. Finally, there’s the cold sink,
Heat cannot be transferred from low-temperature systems to high-temperature systems without work being done elsewhere. This is our second key insight.
When we talk about entropy, we're actually talking about disorder.....Gas has high entropy. Energy and matter in a crystal, by comparison, are neatly arranged. Crystals thus have low entropy. Whenever heat is transferred without work being required, the entropy of a system and its surroundings increases. There's the theory.
A heat engine without a cold sink is simply impossible: the cold sink must be present if entropy is to increase within this universe, and this is why it is so vital.
When the temperature is higher, the range of possible energy levels is greater. This means the probability of predicting the energy level of any given molecule is lower. And this.....the greater uncertainty about the energy level occupied by molecules-is what we have in mind when we talk about increased disorder.......At absolute zero, the Boltzmann distribution shows us that only the lowest energy state-the ground state-is occupied by molecules.
If we pick an atom at random, we will have absolute certainty that it will be occupying this ground state.
Every time a system produces heat, as when burning fuel creates steam, that system has to pay a "heat tax.".....Imagine you're burning a hydrocarbon like coal in a cylinder
To accommodate this extra [gas] volume, the piston is driven outward. This requires work, and some of the heat produced by the reaction is used to cover this energy expenditure.
Some reactions work in the opposite way:......The system has more energy that it can release as heat. Think of it as a kind of tax rebate......When physicists interested in thermodynamics take account of this tax, they use a concept called enthalpy.....Taxation, however, cuts both ways. As we've seen, when it produces work, it pays a heat tax; when it produces heat, on the other hand, it pays a work tax. This is because of the second law of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics has two accounting tools.....First off, there's Helmholtz energy. This is the total amount of work a system is capable of producing......Then there's Gibbs energy-the total amount of work a system is capable of during processes
The first thing we need to say about the third law is that it draws on an important insight into cyclical processes....No finite sequence of cyclic processes can cool a body to absolute zero. This means there must be a point at which the cooling process ends and at which its entropy cannot be lowered any further.
And this is what the third law of thermodynamics states, albeit with a couple of modifications. First off, the law only applies to certain substances-so-called perfectly crystalline substances. These have zero entropy when their temperature is absolute zero. Other substances have non-zero entropy when their temperature reaches absolute zero....We say that crystalline substances converge on a common entropy value of "zero," even though we don't know its absolute value.
The third law can therefore be summarized as: the entropy of all perfectly crystalline substances at absolute zero temperature is zero.
Final summary
The zeroth law of thermodynamics governs thermal equilibrium and introduces the concept of temperature. The first law states that the internal energy of an isolated system remains constant so long as no work is done on it. The second law introduces the concept of entropy-a measure of disorder in energy-and states that entropy in the universe must always increase during a spontaneous change. Finally, the third law tells us that the entropy of all crystalline substances approaches the same value as the temperature nears absolute zero. These are the pillars of thermodynamics”.
OK, What’s my overall take on the book. Well it is certainly interesting and I certainly learned some new things ....like the Zeroeth law and the fact that only perfectly crystalline substances have zero entropy at absolute zero. It’s fairly clearly written but I still have some issues in absorbing it. Maybe some diagrams would have helped and maybe there are diagrams in the full book. But happy to give it four stars.
“Thermodynamics concerns itself with systems. What we mean by this is: anything that has boundaries. ....Beyond those boundaries, we find the system’s surroundings. This could be a bath of cool water in a laboratory or the atmosphere around a system. Together, a system and its surroundings make up the universe.....A flask without a lid. That’s an “open system.”
With mechanical equilibrium........picture two metal cylinders next to one another. Both are fully sealed except for a horizontal tube joining them together like a walkway between two buildings. This tube contains two pistons held together by a rigid rod......Now add another cylinder C to the A cylinder. If C and A and A and B are in mechanical equilibrium, then C and B will also be in mechanical equilibrium.
The first law of thermodynamics–law zero or, as physicists call it, the zeroth law....We’ll begin by introducing a new concept: thermal equilibrium.....Think back to our cylinders, A and another so that their sides are touching. What will happen next? If no change then they are in equilibrium; Add a third cylinder, C. ....If A and B and A and C are in thermal equilibrium, then B and C will also be in thermal equilibrium.....Equal pressure, we concluded, means mechanical equilibrium.....The zeroth law allows us to infer that there must be a similar property determining thermal equilibrium.
Zooming in [to the level of groups of atoms] takes us beyond classical thermodynamics,
Instead, we’ll be dealing with statistical thermodynamics.......According to the Boltzmann distribution, all atom groups are distributed exponentially across their available states. This essentially means that the largest group will be clustered in the lowest possible energy state–the so-called ground state.....The Boltzmann distribution also states that groups of atoms move to higher energy states as their temperature increases.....Put simply, temperature is the parameter that tells us how atoms are distributed across energy states.
Work is a mechanical concept.......Here’s the basic definition: work is motion against an opposing force. Think of a pulley lifting a heavy object, for example....All systems are capable of doing work. This capacity is called energy.....Unless a system is completely isolated, some of its work will be transferred to its surroundings......The name for the process by which energy is transferred from a system to its surroundings or vice versa is called heat.
as long as no work is done on an isolated system, the internal energy of that system will always remain constant. This is the first law of thermodynamics.
Steam engines essentially have three components.
1. A hot energy source
2. A device that transforms that heat into work
3. Finally, there’s the cold sink,
Heat cannot be transferred from low-temperature systems to high-temperature systems without work being done elsewhere. This is our second key insight.
When we talk about entropy, we're actually talking about disorder.....Gas has high entropy. Energy and matter in a crystal, by comparison, are neatly arranged. Crystals thus have low entropy. Whenever heat is transferred without work being required, the entropy of a system and its surroundings increases. There's the theory.
A heat engine without a cold sink is simply impossible: the cold sink must be present if entropy is to increase within this universe, and this is why it is so vital.
When the temperature is higher, the range of possible energy levels is greater. This means the probability of predicting the energy level of any given molecule is lower. And this.....the greater uncertainty about the energy level occupied by molecules-is what we have in mind when we talk about increased disorder.......At absolute zero, the Boltzmann distribution shows us that only the lowest energy state-the ground state-is occupied by molecules.
If we pick an atom at random, we will have absolute certainty that it will be occupying this ground state.
Every time a system produces heat, as when burning fuel creates steam, that system has to pay a "heat tax.".....Imagine you're burning a hydrocarbon like coal in a cylinder
To accommodate this extra [gas] volume, the piston is driven outward. This requires work, and some of the heat produced by the reaction is used to cover this energy expenditure.
Some reactions work in the opposite way:......The system has more energy that it can release as heat. Think of it as a kind of tax rebate......When physicists interested in thermodynamics take account of this tax, they use a concept called enthalpy.....Taxation, however, cuts both ways. As we've seen, when it produces work, it pays a heat tax; when it produces heat, on the other hand, it pays a work tax. This is because of the second law of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics has two accounting tools.....First off, there's Helmholtz energy. This is the total amount of work a system is capable of producing......Then there's Gibbs energy-the total amount of work a system is capable of during processes
The first thing we need to say about the third law is that it draws on an important insight into cyclical processes....No finite sequence of cyclic processes can cool a body to absolute zero. This means there must be a point at which the cooling process ends and at which its entropy cannot be lowered any further.
And this is what the third law of thermodynamics states, albeit with a couple of modifications. First off, the law only applies to certain substances-so-called perfectly crystalline substances. These have zero entropy when their temperature is absolute zero. Other substances have non-zero entropy when their temperature reaches absolute zero....We say that crystalline substances converge on a common entropy value of "zero," even though we don't know its absolute value.
The third law can therefore be summarized as: the entropy of all perfectly crystalline substances at absolute zero temperature is zero.
Final summary
The zeroth law of thermodynamics governs thermal equilibrium and introduces the concept of temperature. The first law states that the internal energy of an isolated system remains constant so long as no work is done on it. The second law introduces the concept of entropy-a measure of disorder in energy-and states that entropy in the universe must always increase during a spontaneous change. Finally, the third law tells us that the entropy of all crystalline substances approaches the same value as the temperature nears absolute zero. These are the pillars of thermodynamics”.
OK, What’s my overall take on the book. Well it is certainly interesting and I certainly learned some new things ....like the Zeroeth law and the fact that only perfectly crystalline substances have zero entropy at absolute zero. It’s fairly clearly written but I still have some issues in absorbing it. Maybe some diagrams would have helped and maybe there are diagrams in the full book. But happy to give it four stars.
August 1, 2025
You might be a humanities supremacist who runs in horror from equations, but C.P. Snow said that not understanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics is like never having read Shakespeare, so maybe you should find out? You buy this book. It's pretty good! Challenging but fair, and sprinkled with dry humour.
Thermodynamics describes how heat moves, and originated in steam engine research, but it describes why anything happens in the universe. As an intro we define some properties of matter (such as intensive or extensive, meaning if it changes with the size of the object - think mass vs density), and then we get on to the laws.
For the zeroth law (retroactively added after the first three), let's assume we don't know the concept of heat. We observe objects interacting with each other, and sometimes change occurs when they come in contact. We will assume a closed system, which can be the whole universe, but more usefully, say, a bathtub. An object can be open or closed (determining if matter can go in or out), and adiabatic or diathermic, which means whether heat can leave the system or not. We observe that when an object touches two objects and has the same reaction, we say that they're the same temperature. If not, they're different. That's the zeroth law. Different temperature scales were invented by Celsius and Fahrenheit, but since there is an absolute zero it makes sense to use one that starts there (e.g. the Kelvin scale)
We can talk about this without needing the concept of atoms. Classical thermodynamics was invented in the 19th century when atoms weren't universally accepted, and works without accepting that hypothesis. However Boltzmann did believe in them (and killed himself because his peers didn't accept his ideas). The way he describes the same idea is that you have little atoms, and the macroscopic behaviour of heat transfer is a statistical aggregation of the behaviour of each of the microscopic particles. It is as if there are different shelves, and when you throw balls at them, they must end up on one of the shelves. These shelves represent different equilibria of the particles of the matter. Obviously if you throw very weakly, they will all end up on the lowest shelf; the more energy you throw with, the more will end up on higher shelves. This is called the Boltzmann distribution, and can be distilled to one variable, β (the reciprocal of the system temperature times Boltzmann's constant). This is more scientifically correct way of measuring temperature; sadly, Celsius/Fahrenheit won out. (This is also the sense in which it is used in neural networks, as a parameter of the softmax activation function.)
Let's move on to the first law: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It sounds simple, right? Let's assume we don't know what energy is. We define work as pushing against some kind of force. Every time you do this (including lifting yourself up a flight of stairs, for example), you're doing work. The unit is the joule (kilogram-metre squared per second squared). If you assume an adiabatic environment, you can do the same amount of work in two different ways (e.g. using an electric current to lift some weights, and doing it with a pulley), which we call path independence. Now if we assume a diathermic environment, we will find it takes a different amount of work, usually a bit more. This is because of heat transfer to the outside. There is no such things as heat, just energy moving from one place to another. So instead of "heating a room", you are "transferring energy from a heating element to the rest of the room in the form of heat" (once again convenience winning out over fidelity to physics). In fact Joule himself did a similar experiment, doing a small amount of work in an isolated environment and measuring the heat change.
The second law (pay attention now!) concerns the mysterious concept of entropy. After James Watt's improvements on the steam engine, the French were anxiously observing from across the channel, wondering how to catch up. Sadi Carnot believed in the caloric theory of heat, that it was a fluid, and investigated substances that would be more efficient than steam. But he realised that the medium doesn't matter: the heat transfer is only related to the amount of work put in to the system. It takes work to transfer heat from a hot object to a colder one (a cold sink), and all work involves a transfer of heat. The cooling towers in an energy plant are thus critical to its energy efficiency; the greater the difference between the temperature of the heat source and the cold sink, the more efficient the engine. Entropy is the amount of change a system undergoes when a specific unit of work happens. Enthalpy refers to how much heat is inside a closed system; entropy refers to the way it is organised. The nature of the universe is for entropy to increase; gas molecules piled at one end of a container will diffuse to fill it. This is spontaneous in the sense of happening by itself, but it doesn't have to be fast (as carbon spontaneously turns into diamond). (And the book doesn't go into entropy in information theory, a different idea but analogous.)
This also has to do with the ways in which matter changes state. The Gibbs energy lines of different states determine state transitions. That's why water goes from ice -> liquid -> steam, but dry ice (CO2) goes from solid to gas (sublimation). (Water also does this under certain conditions; as when hoarfrost melts into air.) In biology, ATP (the universal currency of energy within the body) converts to ADP, releasing a lot of Gibbs energy.
I didn't take any notes on the third law, that as the temperature of a system approaches zero, the entropy tends to a constant value.
Emerging from steam engine, the laws of thermodynamics, as Atkins explains, explain even the origin of a thought. They are summarised humorously by some wit (for inscrutable reasons this is attributed to Allen Ginsberg):
1. You can't win
2. You can't break even
3. You can't even quit
Thermodynamics describes how heat moves, and originated in steam engine research, but it describes why anything happens in the universe. As an intro we define some properties of matter (such as intensive or extensive, meaning if it changes with the size of the object - think mass vs density), and then we get on to the laws.
For the zeroth law (retroactively added after the first three), let's assume we don't know the concept of heat. We observe objects interacting with each other, and sometimes change occurs when they come in contact. We will assume a closed system, which can be the whole universe, but more usefully, say, a bathtub. An object can be open or closed (determining if matter can go in or out), and adiabatic or diathermic, which means whether heat can leave the system or not. We observe that when an object touches two objects and has the same reaction, we say that they're the same temperature. If not, they're different. That's the zeroth law. Different temperature scales were invented by Celsius and Fahrenheit, but since there is an absolute zero it makes sense to use one that starts there (e.g. the Kelvin scale)
We can talk about this without needing the concept of atoms. Classical thermodynamics was invented in the 19th century when atoms weren't universally accepted, and works without accepting that hypothesis. However Boltzmann did believe in them (and killed himself because his peers didn't accept his ideas). The way he describes the same idea is that you have little atoms, and the macroscopic behaviour of heat transfer is a statistical aggregation of the behaviour of each of the microscopic particles. It is as if there are different shelves, and when you throw balls at them, they must end up on one of the shelves. These shelves represent different equilibria of the particles of the matter. Obviously if you throw very weakly, they will all end up on the lowest shelf; the more energy you throw with, the more will end up on higher shelves. This is called the Boltzmann distribution, and can be distilled to one variable, β (the reciprocal of the system temperature times Boltzmann's constant). This is more scientifically correct way of measuring temperature; sadly, Celsius/Fahrenheit won out. (This is also the sense in which it is used in neural networks, as a parameter of the softmax activation function.)
Let's move on to the first law: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It sounds simple, right? Let's assume we don't know what energy is. We define work as pushing against some kind of force. Every time you do this (including lifting yourself up a flight of stairs, for example), you're doing work. The unit is the joule (kilogram-metre squared per second squared). If you assume an adiabatic environment, you can do the same amount of work in two different ways (e.g. using an electric current to lift some weights, and doing it with a pulley), which we call path independence. Now if we assume a diathermic environment, we will find it takes a different amount of work, usually a bit more. This is because of heat transfer to the outside. There is no such things as heat, just energy moving from one place to another. So instead of "heating a room", you are "transferring energy from a heating element to the rest of the room in the form of heat" (once again convenience winning out over fidelity to physics). In fact Joule himself did a similar experiment, doing a small amount of work in an isolated environment and measuring the heat change.
The second law (pay attention now!) concerns the mysterious concept of entropy. After James Watt's improvements on the steam engine, the French were anxiously observing from across the channel, wondering how to catch up. Sadi Carnot believed in the caloric theory of heat, that it was a fluid, and investigated substances that would be more efficient than steam. But he realised that the medium doesn't matter: the heat transfer is only related to the amount of work put in to the system. It takes work to transfer heat from a hot object to a colder one (a cold sink), and all work involves a transfer of heat. The cooling towers in an energy plant are thus critical to its energy efficiency; the greater the difference between the temperature of the heat source and the cold sink, the more efficient the engine. Entropy is the amount of change a system undergoes when a specific unit of work happens. Enthalpy refers to how much heat is inside a closed system; entropy refers to the way it is organised. The nature of the universe is for entropy to increase; gas molecules piled at one end of a container will diffuse to fill it. This is spontaneous in the sense of happening by itself, but it doesn't have to be fast (as carbon spontaneously turns into diamond). (And the book doesn't go into entropy in information theory, a different idea but analogous.)
This also has to do with the ways in which matter changes state. The Gibbs energy lines of different states determine state transitions. That's why water goes from ice -> liquid -> steam, but dry ice (CO2) goes from solid to gas (sublimation). (Water also does this under certain conditions; as when hoarfrost melts into air.) In biology, ATP (the universal currency of energy within the body) converts to ADP, releasing a lot of Gibbs energy.
I didn't take any notes on the third law, that as the temperature of a system approaches zero, the entropy tends to a constant value.
Emerging from steam engine, the laws of thermodynamics, as Atkins explains, explain even the origin of a thought. They are summarised humorously by some wit (for inscrutable reasons this is attributed to Allen Ginsberg):
1. You can't win
2. You can't break even
3. You can't even quit
March 6, 2011
Entropy is increasing? DUH! Who knew?
Amazon review:
The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal--everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. Written by Peter Atkins, one of the world's leading authorities on thermodynamics, this powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics. Guiding the reader a step at a time, Atkins begins with Zeroth (so named because the first two laws were well established before scientists realized that a third law, relating to temperature, should precede them--hence the jocular name zeroth), and proceeds through the First, Second, and Third Laws, offering a clear account of concepts such as the availability of work and the conservation of energy. Atkins ranges from the fascinating theory of entropy (revealing how its unstoppable rise constitutes the engine of the universe), through the concept of free energy, and to the brink, and then beyond the brink, of absolute zero.
Amazon review:
The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal--everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. Written by Peter Atkins, one of the world's leading authorities on thermodynamics, this powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics. Guiding the reader a step at a time, Atkins begins with Zeroth (so named because the first two laws were well established before scientists realized that a third law, relating to temperature, should precede them--hence the jocular name zeroth), and proceeds through the First, Second, and Third Laws, offering a clear account of concepts such as the availability of work and the conservation of energy. Atkins ranges from the fascinating theory of entropy (revealing how its unstoppable rise constitutes the engine of the universe), through the concept of free energy, and to the brink, and then beyond the brink, of absolute zero.
April 3, 2020
2016.03.20–2016.03.20
Contents
Atkins P (2010) (03:31) Laws of Thermodynamics, The - A Very Short Introduction
Preface
List of illustrations
1. The zeroth law: The concept of temperature
• Introducing equilibrium
• The molecular world
• A word of summary
2. The first law: The conservation of energy
• Path independence
• Heat as energy in transition
• Heat and work: a molecular view
• Introducing reversibility
• Introducing enthalpy
• Heat capacity
• Energy and the uniformity of time
3. The second law: The increase in entropy
• Heat engines
• The definition of absolute temperature
• Introducing entropy
• Images of disorder
• Degenerate solids
• Refrigerators and heat pumps
• Abstracting steam engines
4. Free energy: The availability of work
• Introducing the Helmholtz energy
• Introducing the Gibbs energy
• The thermodynamics of freezing
• Living off Gibbs energy
• Chemical equilibrium
5. The third law: The unattainability of zero
• Extreme cold
• Achieving zero
• Some technical consequences
• Temperatures below zero
• Thermodynamics below zero
Conclusion
Further reading
Index
Symbol and unit index
Contents
Atkins P (2010) (03:31) Laws of Thermodynamics, The - A Very Short Introduction
Preface
List of illustrations
1. The zeroth law: The concept of temperature
• Introducing equilibrium
• The molecular world
• A word of summary
2. The first law: The conservation of energy
• Path independence
• Heat as energy in transition
• Heat and work: a molecular view
• Introducing reversibility
• Introducing enthalpy
• Heat capacity
• Energy and the uniformity of time
3. The second law: The increase in entropy
• Heat engines
• The definition of absolute temperature
• Introducing entropy
• Images of disorder
• Degenerate solids
• Refrigerators and heat pumps
• Abstracting steam engines
4. Free energy: The availability of work
• Introducing the Helmholtz energy
• Introducing the Gibbs energy
• The thermodynamics of freezing
• Living off Gibbs energy
• Chemical equilibrium
5. The third law: The unattainability of zero
• Extreme cold
• Achieving zero
• Some technical consequences
• Temperatures below zero
• Thermodynamics below zero
Conclusion
Further reading
Index
Symbol and unit index
December 12, 2011
I felt that I needed to brush up my Thermodynamics, and this little pocket-sized introduction was just the ticket to get me re-started. Not by any means an exhaustive treatment of the subject but a good memory-jogger for someone whose last encounter with Gibbs' Free Energy was sometime around 1987. Each chapter gives firstly a treatment of a concept in classical, 'bulk' thermodynamics, and then explains the statistical link to the micro-world. Peter Atkins tackles the subject with an appealing, dryly humourous approach punctuated with occasional, and slightly controversial, philosophical asides.
February 20, 2022
Very textbookish. Succinct & Accurate... but I, personally, worry about potentially misleading analogues like Taxes : Energy transfer between systems. For example, (paraphrasing here:) the book describes when a system produces work it pays a "heat tax" & when a system produces heat it pays a "work tax". When the products of the reaction take up less volume than the reactants, the system’s surroundings make up the difference, which is equivalent to work, because the system has more energy that it can release as heat...The book likens this to a tax rebate. I am uncomfortable with this sort of anthropomorphizing.
September 24, 2015
They say it is impossible to break the thermodynamics laws in this universe, everything else is uncertain; give it a try. You can see and feel thermodynamics making a cup of tea while reading this book. Hell of fun, right? Wait for it because this Atkins guy push the whole thing to another level of fun. Damn good teacher! For example, he started comparing work and heat at the molecular level to end the discussion making a connection with our civilization development. You will never forget the laws, never!
July 12, 2014
Peter Atkins has an excellent dry writing style and the type of keenly pedantic Oxbridge mind that helps the reader to see things in a different way. He starts this right at the beginning by surprising me with a "zero'th law" and ends the book surprising me again by talking about temperatures below absolute zero. Most importantly, he explains why conventional measures of temperature are an accident of history and that a better approach would be to use inverse temperature. A good book.
November 2, 2023
A very nerdy book I know. Thermodynamics was the subject I understood least during college and ironically after the timeless [Introduction to Wines], the one I use most at work.
I thought I had a much better grasp of it, having used principles in my daily life as well as things related to the weather but no, it does not stick. However the concept of [entropy] is one I have empirically learned from my sons’ bedrooms.
I thought I had a much better grasp of it, having used principles in my daily life as well as things related to the weather but no, it does not stick. However the concept of [entropy] is one I have empirically learned from my sons’ bedrooms.
May 8, 2022
Atkins wrote the bible of physical chemistry, which was my companion through undergrad. He is a legend in the field. I was curious about his ability to explain thermo to the casual reader. A lot of the VSI series fail to encapsulate the breadth of the subject in an effective manner, but Atkins manages it here. His definiton of the third law strays towards being too mathematical, this is just nitpicking though.
February 1, 2018
All that talk about negative temperatures and connections to information theory went way over my head. And as far as I've been able to research further, the author is completely lost with those issues and "negative temperatures" don't really exist... Maybe it should get 1 stars from conveying not just confusing but false information?
April 11, 2016
Very lively, knowledgeable and well-written introduction to Thermodynamics from a real expert. All the explanations, analogies and curiosities are worth the time. Second time I read it, and it still amazes me how well this book does its job, given its short length.
January 16, 2023
This book succeeds in systematically exploring the topic, but it fails to do so in a readable fashion for a non-expert reader who’s looking for a rudimentary grasp of the basics. It’s true that the topic is complex and challenging (as the author argues up front,) but I don’t believe the book’s daunting nature all lands on the subject matter. I’ve read up on other difficult topics using this series (VSI,) and found some books much more approachable.
The main problem was a lack of clarity (versus precision) in the language. In other words, the author didn’t want to oversimplify or use analogies, even though those are what’s needed for a neophyte reader to build an intuitively grasp a subject. For example, while the chapters are nicely organized by the laws of thermodynamic and presented in their usual order, there’s no quick and dirty definition of the respective law given at the beginning of each chapter. A simplified definition (incomplete and imperfect as it might be) would allow the reader to gain a basic intuition of the concept. Then, the reader can tweak and expand the concept as they go. But that’s not the approach taken here. Instead, several paragraphs are taken to get around to a statement of the law in question. There was also a lack of analogies and other tools to help the reader gain a foothold based upon what they know. I suspect these tools were avoided because they are all incorrect at some level of precision, and it was the scholarly fear of imprecision that resulted in their teaching effectiveness being abandoned.
This is a great guide for people who think mathematically and / or who are looking for a quick refresher of ideas they once knew. For those who don’t have a background in science and who need an explanation that takes efforts with comprehension, it’s probably not the best one can do.
The main problem was a lack of clarity (versus precision) in the language. In other words, the author didn’t want to oversimplify or use analogies, even though those are what’s needed for a neophyte reader to build an intuitively grasp a subject. For example, while the chapters are nicely organized by the laws of thermodynamic and presented in their usual order, there’s no quick and dirty definition of the respective law given at the beginning of each chapter. A simplified definition (incomplete and imperfect as it might be) would allow the reader to gain a basic intuition of the concept. Then, the reader can tweak and expand the concept as they go. But that’s not the approach taken here. Instead, several paragraphs are taken to get around to a statement of the law in question. There was also a lack of analogies and other tools to help the reader gain a foothold based upon what they know. I suspect these tools were avoided because they are all incorrect at some level of precision, and it was the scholarly fear of imprecision that resulted in their teaching effectiveness being abandoned.
This is a great guide for people who think mathematically and / or who are looking for a quick refresher of ideas they once knew. For those who don’t have a background in science and who need an explanation that takes efforts with comprehension, it’s probably not the best one can do.
January 13, 2019
This book is a great introduction to some of the most fundamental truths about the universe, and why something happens instead of nothing. I studied Engineering many years ago, and wish I'd had this clear explanation of things like enthalpy and entropy, and their wider implications, at my side then. I'm not sure how well anyone without a physics background would get on with it, but for me it was excellent. I've only given it 4 stars, instead of 5, because I was reading the Kindle version and some of the diagrams wouldn't zoom up from their tiny size, which made some pages hard going. If there was a 4.99 stars option, it would have got it.
The explanation of how an insight into the nature of phenomena such as life, thought and even time itself grew out of an effort to make steam engines more efficient is fascinating.
I have seen it postulated elsewhere that the past, present and future all coexist in block spacetime. The only thing that prevents us from seeing into the future, instead of just being aware of the past, is that our thoughts are thermodynamic processes, and because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, have temporal direction. In the future that I cannot see, I hope that we manage to learn a lot more about the directionality of all nature's processes and their relationship to the arrow of time.
For people with a trepidation about scientific explanations, I would point you towards Tom Stoppard's incredible play, "Arcadia", which deals with the same topics through a humanities lens, and will hopefully impart some of the feeling of awe that is generated in those that can read the mathematics.
The explanation of how an insight into the nature of phenomena such as life, thought and even time itself grew out of an effort to make steam engines more efficient is fascinating.
I have seen it postulated elsewhere that the past, present and future all coexist in block spacetime. The only thing that prevents us from seeing into the future, instead of just being aware of the past, is that our thoughts are thermodynamic processes, and because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, have temporal direction. In the future that I cannot see, I hope that we manage to learn a lot more about the directionality of all nature's processes and their relationship to the arrow of time.
For people with a trepidation about scientific explanations, I would point you towards Tom Stoppard's incredible play, "Arcadia", which deals with the same topics through a humanities lens, and will hopefully impart some of the feeling of awe that is generated in those that can read the mathematics.
July 17, 2023
The book briefly introduces the four laws of thermodynamics, which also includes the concept of heat and temperature. The zeroth law talks about the concept of temperature, the definition of thermodynamics, also states that if two thermodynamic systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they must also be in thermal equilibrium with each other. The first law is about the conservation of energy. The book states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred or converted from one form to another. The second law is about heat transfer and the concept of entropy. Heat can only be transferred from a higher temperature object to a lower temperature object, and its order is irreversible. The third law is about the unattainability of zero. The book discusses the possibility of which state can reach absolute zero (-273°C, 0K), and extreme temperatures. As the temperature of a system approaches absolute zero, its entropy approaches the minimum possible value.
I have known more about thermodynamics and its applications after reading this book. The author gave the readers clear examples that help me understand more about thermodynamics and how it is related to our daily lives. Although it is quite complicated and hard to understand, it can help me know more about temperature and thermodynamics. I would strongly recommend it to people who love physics.
I have known more about thermodynamics and its applications after reading this book. The author gave the readers clear examples that help me understand more about thermodynamics and how it is related to our daily lives. Although it is quite complicated and hard to understand, it can help me know more about temperature and thermodynamics. I would strongly recommend it to people who love physics.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2021
If thermo is on your curriculum you may as well give this a go
i knocked off a star 'cos he uses disorder to 'explain' entropy, you might like to look at the work of Lambert in the USA, Googenheim in UK
but i give a star 'cos he gives a definition of disorder, hang on a mo, knock it off, it's a quantum definition
Page 9
to understand Boltzman we need quantum mechanics, but don't worry, you don't need to understand QM, just this result.
'sfunny 'cos Boltzman didn't need QM to understand Boltzman
page 10
the precise form of the boltzman distribution is so important it's important to see its form, to simplify matters I express it. . . . . as the negative exponent of e , ( whatever e is)
i hope that makes it clear for you, didn't help me at all
P44, 45 definition of absolute temperature, due to Lord Kelvin, you could look it up on the internet, 'cos this book doesn't really do it
If a 'proposed engine ' contravenes a statement of the second law then it won't work, and you can keep giving examples and saying "won't work, 2nd law", which is what many texts books do, but there will always be a practical, physical reason and Atkins could have squeezed one in
i knocked off a star 'cos he uses disorder to 'explain' entropy, you might like to look at the work of Lambert in the USA, Googenheim in UK
but i give a star 'cos he gives a definition of disorder, hang on a mo, knock it off, it's a quantum definition
Page 9
to understand Boltzman we need quantum mechanics, but don't worry, you don't need to understand QM, just this result.
'sfunny 'cos Boltzman didn't need QM to understand Boltzman
page 10
the precise form of the boltzman distribution is so important it's important to see its form, to simplify matters I express it. . . . . as the negative exponent of e , ( whatever e is)
i hope that makes it clear for you, didn't help me at all
P44, 45 definition of absolute temperature, due to Lord Kelvin, you could look it up on the internet, 'cos this book doesn't really do it
If a 'proposed engine ' contravenes a statement of the second law then it won't work, and you can keep giving examples and saying "won't work, 2nd law", which is what many texts books do, but there will always be a practical, physical reason and Atkins could have squeezed one in
October 20, 2024
I’ve never described a book as functional before, but that really encapsulates this book for me.
It has all the engagement and expertise a junior college student trying to reach the word count in their term paper does.
Despite this being a very brief introduction to the world of thermodynamics, the book as a whole could have been much shorter. Which I think is a hilarious irony that the author seemed to struggle to fill pages.
Granted you may take my review with a grain of salt, as the version I used was the audiobook version and the narrator did not do the book any favors. Playing at 1.5 speed was almost a necessity.
It has all the engagement and expertise a junior college student trying to reach the word count in their term paper does.
Despite this being a very brief introduction to the world of thermodynamics, the book as a whole could have been much shorter. Which I think is a hilarious irony that the author seemed to struggle to fill pages.
Granted you may take my review with a grain of salt, as the version I used was the audiobook version and the narrator did not do the book any favors. Playing at 1.5 speed was almost a necessity.
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