“Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don’t understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don’t understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, it doesn’t bother you anymore.”
-Arnold Sommerfield
The above quote is interesting. Thermodynamics deals with very basic natural/physical concepts and one need to think through and make some sense and logic out of these concepts, which are very essential. Thus, Thermodynamics require a lot of thinking and focusing, it will challenge you intellectually, but it does not require o lot of math at all. We will try to understand different explanations of the same basic concepts, i.e. to generalize and simplify.
What is the study of Thermodynamics and what are its governing principles or laws? The Thermodynamics studies the physical and chemical systems’ changes, thus the physical and chemical processes, caused by energy exchanges. If it is expended to all natural processes in the universe, the original concepts will be applied on biological (live) processes, including information and the human behavior, thus becoming very complex study. For simplicity, we will focus on physical and chemical processes only.
M. Kostic: www.kostic.niu.edu (see MORE...)