Commentary on Thermodynamics e-bog

The aim of this book is to comment on, and clarify, the mathematical aspects of the theory of thermodynamics. The standard presentations of the subject are often beset by a number of obscurities associated with the words "e;state"e;, "e;reversible"e;, "e;irreversible"e;, and "e;quasi-static"e;. This book is written in the belief that such obscurities are best removed not by the formal axiomatization of thermodynamics, but by setting the theory in the wider context of a genuine field theory which incorporates the effects of heat conduction and intertia, and proving appropriate results about the governing differential equations of this field theory. Even in the simplest one-dimensional case it is a nontrivial task to carry through the details of this program, and many challenging problems remain open.