A Treatise on Heat

Abstract

THE authors of this book have written a most stimulating version of the old song “Heat a Mode of Motion”, and written it, too, rather in the grand manner. Their arrangement of matter follows classical lines. Formal thermodynamics is not introduced until more than half-way through the book. Before that point is reached, there are excellent descriptive chapters on thermometry, calorimetry, production of low temperature, heat engines, gases, changes of state, elementary kinetic theory and other topics. These are all treated in a most pleasing broadly descriptive manner, with a temperature based on the perfect gas scale and an occasional forward reference to the second law where unavoidable. The ideas of hot and cold and heat are here quite properly treated as familiar primary concepts which need not be further analysed—quantities which we must set to work to measure precisely—and the kinetic interpretation of heat is brought in naturally in its right place. The chapter on heat engines seems to me to be exceptionally satisfactory for the elementary treatment that is intended, being practically without reference to entropy, and using merely a perfect gas Carnot cycle as standard. An exceedingly pleasing feature is the section on the Otto cycle gas or oil engine, the Diesel engine and steam turbines. The latter, however, are not given credit for the full overall efficiency that has recently been attained.

A Treatise on Heat

(including Kinetic Theory of Gases, Thermodynamics and Recent Advances in Statistical Thermodynamics). Being the second and revised edition of ” A Text Book of Heat”. By Prof. M. N. Saha B. N. Srivastava. Second edition. Pp. xii + 815 + 2 plates. (Allahabad and Calcutta: The Indian Press, Ltd., 1935.) 21s.