Fundamentals of Thermodynamics and Applications: With Historical Annotations and Many Citations from Avogadro to Zermelo

Thermodynamics is the much abused slave of many masters:

• physicists who love the totally impractical Carnot process,
• mechanical engineers who design power stations and refrigerators,
• chemists who are successfully synthesizing ammonia and are puzzled by photosynthesis,
• meteorologists who calculate cloud bases and predict föhn, boraccia and scirocco,
• physico-chemists who vulcanize rubber and build fuel cells,
• chemical engineers who rectify natural gas and distil f- mented potato juice,
• metallurgists who improve steels and harden surfaces,
• - trition counselors who recommend a proper intake of calories,
• mechanics who adjust heat exchangers,
• architects who construe – and often misconstrue – ch- neys,
• biologists who marvel at the height of trees,
• air conditioning engineers who design saunas and the ventilation of air plane cabins,
• rocket engineers who create supersonic flows, et cetera.

Not all of these professional groups need the full depth and breadth of ther- dynamics. For some it is enough to consider a well-stirred tank, for others a s- tionary nozzle flow is essential, and yet others are well-served with the partial d- ferential equation of heat conduction. It is therefore natural that thermodynamics is prone to mutilation; different group-specific meta-thermodynamics’ have emerged which serve the interest of the groups under most circumstances and leave out aspects that are not often needed in their fields.