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Block by Block
- The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 33 hrs and 47 mins
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- Narrated by: Richard Wolfson
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's Summary
At the heart of many fields - physics, chemistry, engineering - lies thermodynamics. While this science plays a critical role in determining the boundary between what is and is not possible in the natural world, it occurs to many as an indecipherable black box, thus making the subject a challenge to learn. Two obstacles contribute to this situation, the first being the disconnect between the fundamental theories and the underlying physics and the second being the confusing concepts and terminologies involved with the theories. While one needn't confront either of these two obstacles to successfully use thermodynamics to solve real problems, overcoming both provides access to a greater intuitive sense of the problems and more confidence, more strength, and more creativity in solving them.
Block by Block offers an original perspective on thermodynamic science and history based on the three approaches of a practicing engineer, academician, and historian. The book synthesizes and gathers into one accessible volume a strategic range of foundational topics involving the atomic theory, energy, entropy, and the laws of thermodynamics.
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What listeners say about Block by Block
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- John L. Luick
- 24-12-2020
Remarkable review of the topic
I was left with a huge respect for the author's painstaking analysis and reconstruction of the evolution of our modern understanding of energy and entropy, from its early beginnings, right up through Boltzmann (with a final chapter on Information Theory). The book doesn't purport to cover developments since the mid-1900s, so it would be unfair to fault it for not doing so.
I listened to most chapters two or three times. I was amazed at how little I knew about certain things - case in point, I had no idea how the concept, or even the word, "energy" came into being. There were references to equations, but I was mainly interested in the historical development, so was not concerned about not having the equations at hand (most or all of which are pretty basic and could be found in any text, had I wanted to review them).
The writing style is clear and precise. The narrator's enunciation and pacing is flawless, but I suspect he's not mathematically literate - for example, he says "divided by" repeatedly when any maths person would say "over". One other minor quibble - maybe it's just me, but I think that reading out the parenthetical birth and death years every time they're in the text could have been omitted.
But I still have no idea what entropy is (joke).
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