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Why the Mark Helprin quote in my Introduction?

Full access to Block by Block’s Introduction—and then some! they certainly share a lot!—is available on google books here (pp. xiii-xx). The Introduction shares the motivations that drove me along with the structure I created to guide me. In keeping with the intent of the series of posts I plan on publishing for the foreseeable…

Gibbs free energy: G or ∆G?

One of my objectives in creating a more effective approach to teaching thermodynamics is to bring clarity to some of the confusing terms and concepts embedded in this field. Initially I focused on the concept of heat by pointing out that there is no such thing. I now turn toward free energy. As a very…

Pauli exclusion is not a repulsive force, and yet…

“It’s not a force.” – Professor Steven Weinberg I made a mistake. In my book, Block by Block, I wrote about the attraction and repulsion forces between atoms. For the former, I stated that attraction results from the fact that atoms act like spinning magnets; they contain a positive charge (proton) that is separated from…

Career decision making – trust your gut

When I give thermodynamics presentations to high school and college students, I begin with a 10-minute discussion about career decision-making based on my own experiences. I now share this discussion with you, both to provide you with helpful and hopefully inspiring ideas and to also seek your feedback. Do your thoughts align with mine? Let…

Why I paid $100 for a Vonnegut quote

Publisher: “Before we go to print, we just wanted to make sure you got permissions for the epigraphs in your book.” Me: “What’s an epigraph?” As I was traveling through the final stages of publishing my book, I learned that there are two approaches to using a quote. One is to embed the quote in…

Newton: On whose shoulders did he stand?

No Newton, no Principia. That much is clear. But did Newton do it alone? He was naturally exposed to the ideas of such predecessors as Descartes and Galileo and such contemporaries as Leibniz and Huygens. That this collective influenced Newton is reflected in his own writing, “If I have seen further it is by standing…

How did Galileo measure time?

Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science – Steven Hawking [1] Galileo was fascinated by motion and continually experimented with pendulums, cannons, and rolling balls to understand why bodies move the way they do. The arguable culmination of these efforts occurred in 1604 when he discovered…

Science and the power of multiple hypotheses

When asked my opinion on various science-related topics that are in the news, my usual reply is, “I don’t know.” It’s not that I’m incapable of knowing. It’s that I haven’t studied the topics in enough detail to have a well-grounded opinion. My scientific expertise lays elsewhere, in a less popular news cycle. HOWEVER If…

Joule-Thomson Effect (Part 2) – my hypothesis

In a previous video (here), I stated my belief that a better understanding of thermodynamics is available by identifying the connections between the micro-world of moving and interacting atoms and the macro-world of classical thermodynamics. My goal is to do just this. My starting point? The Joule-Thomson effect, which is the temperature change that occurs…

Goggins, Full Capability, and “Atoms First” Thermodynamics

David Goggins, ex-Navy SEAL, now ultra-athlete and motivational speaker, shared in a popular YouTube video (JRE #1212) something that I found incredibly motivating. His biggest fear, and I paraphrase here, is that he arrives at the gates of Heaven and sees God there with a clipboard, holding a list of many great accomplishments. Goggins’ fear…

Thermodynamic “pain point” results – here are your responses

I believe that a better understanding of thermodynamics is available by explaining the connections between the micro-world of moving and colliding atoms that attract and repel each other and the macro-world of classical thermodynamics. My goal is to identify and clarify such micro-to-macro connections. To ensure that I’m addressing true needs of the science community,…

What are your personal “pain points” with thermodynamics?

What are your personal “pain points” with thermodynamics? What are the stumbling blocks you encounter when trying to understand the physical meaning behind such thermodynamic equations and phenomena as Gibbs Free Energy, Joule-Thomson expansion, phase change, and even the physical properties of matter, including heat capacity and absolute temperature? Could you please share these with me in…

The Road to Entropy – Boltzmann and his probabilistic entropy

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) brought his mastery of mathematics to the kinetic theory of gases and provided us with our first mechanical understanding of entropy. To Boltzmann, his work proved that entropy ALWAYS increases or remains constant. But to others, most notably Josef Loschmidt (1821-1895), his work contained a paradox that needed to be addressed. Loschmidt…

The Road to Entropy – The kinetic theory of gases & heat capacity

I believe that an improved approach to teaching thermodynamics can be created by starting with the atomic theory of matter and then explaining the connections between this theory and macroscopic thermodynamic phenomena. This micro-to-macro approach arguably began in the late 19th century when a small group of scientists, namely Rudolf Clausius, James Clerk Maxwell, and…

The Road to Entropy – Clausius, Gibbs, and increasing entropy

At the conclusion of his famed 1865 paper announcing the discovery of a new property of matter that he named entropy, Rudolf Clausius stated: the entropy of the universe tends to a maximum. This statement came as a total surprise to me as there was no prior supportive discussion behind it, and it had me…

The Road to Entropy – Clausius undaunted

Have you ever experienced that wondrous “Eureka!” moment of insight when you’ve discovered some hidden secret of nature? Archimedes did when he realized that the volume of water displaced is equal to the volume of the body submerged. Kekulé did when discovered benzene’s structure. Hubble did when he discovered that the stars are all moving…

The Road to Entropy – James Joule and the power of his curiosity (video)

James Joule could have observed what he did and then done nothing with it. Instead, he became driven to understand and explain it and so discovered the mechanical equivalent of heat, a forerunner of the concept of energy and the 1st law of Thermodynamics. His story is a good one, an inspiring one, an example…

The Road to Entropy – Phil Hosken on Richard Trevithick and the invention of the high-pressure steam engine (video)

As shared in my previous post (here), the historical road to entropy started with Denis Papin’s development of the piston-in-cylinder assembly and Thomas Newcomen’s and James Watt’s subsequent efforts to commercialize and continuously improve fire engines or atmospheric engines built around this assembly. Steam at atmospheric pressure was employed in these engines, not as a…

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