Thermal Physics

by Charles Kittel, Herbert Kroemer

CONGRATULATIONS TO HERBERT KROEMER, 2000 NOBEL LAUREATE FOR PHYSICS
 
For upper-division courses in thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, Kittel and Kroemer offers a modern approach to thermal physics that is based on the idea that all physical systems can be described in terms of their discrete quantum states, rather than drawing on 19th-century classical mechanics concepts.

Genres: Physics, Textbooks, Science, Nonfiction, Reference, School, Mathematics

496 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1969

Reviews

[Coral · Rating 2 out of 5]

How did this guy choose his variable names? By flipping a 26-sided die and picking whatever letter landed on top??

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thermodynamics is ridiculous. It isn't 1870 anymore. Use statistical mechanics. This book starts with statistical mechanics immediately. Use it. Then derive thermodynamics from first principles.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buy the first edition for lower price and better organization and exposition. The second edition is ruined by rewriting (most likely by the added co-author Herbert Kroemer).

[Alan Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way more interesting than the General Physics level bullshit.

[Othello Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got Boltzmann'd really hard but at least I survived. Thank you, Professor Lobb for making our misery more fun.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction. Starts with statistical mechanics, which is very reasonable in the modern age.

[Charlie Wu · Rating 3 out of 5]

terse language and weird notation

[Ethan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pain...all I know is pain...

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

usually i love examples, but i actually found a book that overdoes it. too many examples for an intro book. and because they are real-world examples, they stretch the simple intro models, so that a student would be bewildered as to how to apply the simple framework to the extremely messy example. ("if we assume the valence electrons in a conductor are like an ideal non-interacting gas..." WHAT? who in hell would have thought that was reasonable?)admirable in intent, but overkill and ultimately counterproductive. stick with simpler, non-sexy examples.

i did like some of the statistical stuff about how sharply peaked the distribution functions are, the interpretation of entropy, and the chapter on heat pumps and the carnot cycle.

i suspect the landau and lifshitz book is a better choice.

[Stuart Woolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Statistical mechanics is probably the most elegant (and useful) physical theory I have encountered: you basically derive all of thermodynamics from scratch (or with the least objectionable set of fundamental postulates).

A lot of people (myself included) do not like this textbook at first but learn to appreciate its simplicity as the details of thermal physics become clearer.

[Rafael Díaz HR · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book, specially after rereading it a couple of times. The style is succinct and the arguments elegant (most of the time). Maybe it works better once you know a little bit about stat mech. It lacks a bit of discussion about how minimizing a thermodynamic potential is equivalent to having the configuration with the highest probability.

[Tao Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

thermal physics (aka statistical mechanics). I know it's used at Cal (UC Berkeley) and Princeton