Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik

Abstract

ONE of the most universal generalisations that can be made about the study of mathematical physics is that everybody finds thermodynamics a very difficult subject. In consequence of this there have arisen several different ways of presenting it, which vary far more from one another than do the presentations in such subjects as dynamics or electricity. There is first the thermodynamics of the engineer, in which entropy is something steam has, which can be found from tables. Then there is the thermodynamics of the chemist, whose laboratory is stocked with semipermeable membranes. He is a great designer of engines, but all his enjoyment of his wonderful instruments is spoiled by his perpetual suspicion that Nature is trying to score off him. Next, there is the thermodynamics of the mathematician; this scraps the chemist's machinery and does the whole business by means of Pfaffian forms, a peculiar branch of mathematics, and almost the only one in which it looks as if more comes out at the end than is put in at the beginning. Lastly, there is the super-man, who can see and count the atoms, who regards all the others as gamblers, though he is bound to admit that they know how to lay the odds. He occupies a position rather apart, being, so to speak, engaged in a study of the jurisprudence of thermodynamics.

Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik.

Von Prof. Dr. Max Planck. Sechste Auflage. Pp. x + 292. (Berlin: W. De Gruyter und Co., 1921.)