gibbs
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Afterword to my book
The following is an excerpt from the final chapter of my book, Block by Block – The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics, in which I took a step back to share a few insights and observations I unexpectedly gathered along the way. Happy the man, who, studying nature’s laws, Thro’ known effects can trace… Continue reading
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Physical chemistry – a new field in science
As a young man I tried to read thermodynamics, but I always came up against entropy as a brick wall that stopped any further progress. – James Swinburne (1904) [1] The second law of thermodynamics, which is known also as the law of the dissipation or degradation of energy, or the law of the increase… Continue reading
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Dissemination of Gibbs’s work (Path 2): Gibbs ➔ van der Waals ➔ Roozeboom ➔ community
In my previous two posts (here and here), I described the ways by which J. Willard Gibbs’s work on thermodynamics spread through the European science community. In this post I describe another way Gibbs’s work spread and it began with early admirer of Gibbs, Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923), a Dutch theoretical physicist. It… Continue reading
Block by Block – The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics. “Hanlon has written a masterpiece.” – Mike Pauken, Senior Engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and author of Thermodynamics for Dummies
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About Me
Hi! I’m Bob Hanlon. After earning my Sc.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and enjoying a long career in both industry and academia, I’ve returned to school, my own self-guided school, seeking to better understand the world of thermodynamics. Please join me on my journey.
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