Last, this task could not have been completed without the support of my beloved wife, Josephine Vamos Honig, who gave me much moral support after the death of my first wife, as well as during the book revision process, and to whom I shall remain ever grateful.
It is a pleasure to express my appreciation to various individuals at Academic Press who encouraged me to prepare the revised text and who were most cooperative in getting the book to press. Purdue University has provided a very comfortable milieu in which both the writing and the later revision of the book were undertaken. Sophia Onayo, who compiled the index and the table of contents. Gail Shively, who completed this onerous task and patiently dealt with all of the unexpected formatting problems and Ms. Virginia Burbrink, who undertook much of the enormous task of converting the typography of the earlier edition to the present word processor format Ms. It remains to thank those whose diligence and hard work have made it possible to bring this work to fruition: Ms. The author would appreciate comments from readers that pertain to remaining errors or to obscure presentations. A special effort has also been made to eliminate the typographical errors of the earlier edition.
Several short sections containing sample calculations have also been inserted at locations deemed to be particularly instructive in illustrating the application of basic principles to actual problems. Principal among these are the full use of thermodynamic information for characterizing the Joule-Thomson effect, a reformulation of the basic principles underlying the operation of electrochemical cells, and a brief derivation of the Onsager reciprocity conditions. However, Section 1.16 has been completely rewritten, and several new sections have been added to clarify concepts or to add further insights. The goals of the presentation have remained unaltered: to provide a self-contained exposition of the main areas of thermodynamics and to demonstrate how from a few fundamental concepts one obtains a whole cornucopia of results through the consistent application of logic and mathematical operations. The present volume is an upgraded version of a reference text published by Elsevier under the same title in 1982.
0 kommentar(er)
