Thermodynamics

摘要

I explain the concept of opportunity cost to my students in this manner: when they identify a project and begin work on it there is a cost associated with their decision. By focusing on a particular problem they eliminate from their consideration other problems that could conceivably have led to a higher eventual reward. Thus, my first thought as I leafed through this book was: why another undergraduate text on mechanical engineering thermodynamics? This was not meant as an unkind question because I have myself written a thermodynamics textbook with colleagues, although our text is primarily addressed to graduate students. A few years ago we convinced ourselves (and the publisher) of a niche and need. Moreover, having taught an advanced thermodynamics course, it seemed natural for us, being professors, to write a text for it. For this reason alone I found myself relating with Klein and Nellis because they also found themselves with a similar opportunity. They obviously love the subject because they begin their book with the statement "thermodynamics is unquestionably the most powerful and most elegant of the engineering sciences."