The Refrigerator and the Universe: Understanding the Laws of Energy

by Martin Goldstein, Inge F. Goldstein

C. P. Snow once remarked that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics is like never having read Shakespeare. Yet, while many people grasp the first law of energy, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed,” few recognize the second, “Entropy can only increase.” What is entropy anyway, and why must it increase? Whether we want to know how a device as simple as a refrigerator works or understand the fate of the universe, we must start with the concepts of energy and entropy.

In The Refrigerator and the Universe , Martin and Inge Goldstein explain the laws of thermodynamics for science buffs and neophytes alike. They begin with a lively presentation of the historical development of thermodynamics. The authors then show how the laws follow from the atomic theory of matter and give examples of their applicability to such diverse phenomena as the radiation of light from hot bodies, the formation of diamonds from graphite, how the blood carries oxygen, and the history of the earth. The laws of energy, the Goldsteins conclude, have something to say about everything, even if they do not tell us everything about anything.

Genres: Science, Physics, Stem, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

About the author

Dr. Marty Goldstein's Smith Ridge Veterinary Center is in South Salem, New York. He received his D.V.M. from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and has been at the forefront of integrative medicine for pets for decades. He has many cats and dogs, all of which are quite old and healthy. Dr. Goldstein is also the author of The Nature of Animal Healing.

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a book club, a bit difficult to find in libraries or via Amazon considering the 1990s copyright. A thorough review and very good treatment of thermodynamics, especially the second law. Despite its age, a handy reference book.

[Froggarana · Rating 3 out of 5]

if thermo is on your curriculum you may as well give this a go
they have made a serious effort at making thermo comprehensible
however
400 pages, you might have thought they could have given a derivation for the carnot efficiency equation in kelvin , two pages in an appendix perhaps, especially as that is where the second law comes from, instead it is just given

they could have described and explained the carnot cycle, and shown why heat must be rejected , instead they keep saying that is what the second law tells us

[Shirzad Iranmehr]

این کتاب دید جامع و زیبایی از ترمودینامیک و نقش آن در پدیده‌های مختلف جهان هستی ارائه می‌دهد. تأثیراتی که گستره وسیعی از بدن انسان تا عملکرد کیهان را در برمی‌گیرد.

[Tue Le · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein have written an excellent book on science for the general public. Only a secondary-school education is necessary to understand the book. It is high in detail and insights, and it has some helpful illustrations.

Having been published in 1993, it is understandably outdated in certain respects. In its discussion of special relativity, the use of capital Beta is non-standard. Today, we use capital Beta to represent the ratio of the speed of an object and the speed of light in vacuum (v/c). What Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein call capital Beta is the reciprocal of (lower-case) gamma, the Lorentz factor. The notion "apparent" or relativistic mass is no longer in use. Instead, we now prefer the rest mass of an object, which remains invariant under a Lorentz transformation. In other words, it is a Lorentz scalar. Finally, the existence of black holes is no longer in doubt. We have not only observed many strong candidates for black holes, including the supermassive one at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), but have also taken a few photographs of these objects using a global array of radio telescopes, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend this book to anyone interested in the science of energy, which is wide and fascinating.