Storage, Flow, and Production of Heat

Abstract

Thermodynamics is the science of heat and hotness, of how bodies and other physical systems respond to heat, and of how heat can be used to drive other processes. In this chapter, I will introduce the fundamental quantities and concepts of thermodynamics and create dynamical models of some interesting phenomena. I shall justify the generic laws of thermal physics which we are going to use throughout this book. Constitutive laws will be introduced on an informal basis when needed for getting answers to some special problems. They will be treated in great detail in the following chapters.