Thermodynamics. An Advanced Treatment for Chemists and Physicists

Abstract

The present treatment of thermodynamics, which is addressed to physicists and chemists rather than to engineers, introduces the third principle of thermodynamics (entropy) at the outset and employs it throughout, within the framework of statistical mechanics. Extensive use is made of the function lambda, or 'absolute activity', which is related to chemical potential and plays an important role in statistical mechanics. Physicochemical systems are classified according to the number and nature of their components, rather than the number or nature of their phases, and interfaces are dealt with according to the number of components. Experimental data and detailed calculations are included for illustrative purposes.