P. W. Atkins

Chemistry professor Atkins examines the epochal ideas of science, including evolution, the role of DNA in heredity, entropy, the atomic structure of matter, symmetry, wave-particle duality, the expansion of the universe and the curvature of spacetime. Exploring the history of these concepts from the ancient Greeks onward, the chapters amount to case studies in the power of the Galilean paradigm of the "isolation of the essentials of a problem," and mathematical theorising disciplined by show more real-world experiment, as humanity's understanding moves from armchair speculation and observational lore to testable theories of great explanatory power. Atkins presents this progress as a search for evermore fundamental abstractions: DNA emerges as the fleeting physical instantiation of immortal information; thermodynamics is a universal tendency to disorder; and much of physics itself a logical corollary of pure geometry. Writing in lucid, engaging prose illustrated with many ingenious diagrams, Atkins often succeeds brilliantly in conveying the deep conceptual foundations of scientific disciplines to readers lacking a mathematical background. He falters a little, like most science popularizers, at the frontiers of modern physics, where things get very abstract indeed. Atkins's examples are excellent and his prose a marvel of economy and the elegant style, wide-ranging scope, and unusually high ratio of enlightening explanation to baffling abstruseness make this book one of the best of its kind.

Condensing scientific knowledge into 10 concepts, such as the conservation of energy, Atkins offers a primer on the essential ideas of Western science. This is a work descriptive of abstract principles,and it is easily grasped, for Atkins, in the humouring manner of a popular lecturer at the blackboard, illustrates underlying connections that unite dissimilar phenomena, such as waves and particles inquantum mechanics. Although the material does not include equations,readers still must acclimatise to significant brain-bending, especially on the subject of symmetry and on dimensions beyond our familiar three, crucial to getting a grip on the string and M-theory so current with physicists. Where does Galileo's finger figure in this? Reclining in a cup displayed in Florence, it represents to its curators and to Atkins the scientific method, the way of "unpacking" (in the author's recurring phrase) the appearances of nature to reveal its essence. show less

Yes I studied physics at both high school and university and learned about the laws of thermodynamics but I thought it was time that I took a refresher. Hence I found the Blinkist summary of this book and thought that it might do the job. I’m only half convinced. I’ve never heard of the “Zeroeth law” of thermodynamics before. But I guess it’s a thing. And, whilst the examples are child’s play really, I still find it difficult to get my head around a concept like enthalapy. So I show more haven’t totally achieved what I set out to do.....Maybe I need to read the whole book instead of just the summary. But only after writing this review did I realise two things: First that it was written by Peter Atkins and I already have a couple of books of his...certainly one on molecules which is fascinating. And the second point is that this is a summary of one of the "Short Introduction" books which are already a summary of the filed. I think I really need to read, at least, this "Short Introduction". Anyway, my attempt to draw out the essential points from the blankest version of the book is as follows:
“Thermodynamics concerns itself with systems. What we mean by this is: anything that has boundaries. ....Beyond those boundaries, we find the system’s surroundings. This could be a bath of cool water in a laboratory or the atmosphere around a system. Together, a system and its surroundings make up the universe.....A flask without a lid. That’s an “open system.”
With mechanical equilibrium........picture two metal cylinders next to one another. Both are fully sealed except for a horizontal tube joining them together like a walkway between two buildings. This tube contains two pistons held together by a rigid rod......Now add another cylinder C to the A cylinder. If C and A and A and B are in mechanical equilibrium, then C and B will also be in mechanical equilibrium.
The first law of thermodynamics–law zero or, as physicists call it, the zeroth law....We’ll begin by introducing a new concept: thermal equilibrium.....Think back to our cylinders, A and another so that their sides are touching. What will happen next? If no change then they are in equilibrium; Add a third cylinder, C. ....If A and B and A and C are in thermal equilibrium, then B and C will also be in thermal equilibrium.....Equal pressure, we concluded, means mechanical equilibrium.....The zeroth law allows us to infer that there must be a similar property determining thermal equilibrium.
Zooming in [to the level of groups of atoms] takes us beyond classical thermodynamics,
Instead, we’ll be dealing with statistical thermodynamics.......According to the Boltzmann distribution, all atom groups are distributed exponentially across their available states. This essentially means that the largest group will be clustered in the lowest possible energy state–the so-called ground state.....The Boltzmann distribution also states that groups of atoms move to higher energy states as their temperature increases.....Put simply, temperature is the parameter that tells us how atoms are distributed across energy states.
Work is a mechanical concept.......Here’s the basic definition: work is motion against an opposing force. Think of a pulley lifting a heavy object, for example....All systems are capable of doing work. This capacity is called energy.....Unless a system is completely isolated, some of its work will be transferred to its surroundings......The name for the process by which energy is transferred from a system to its surroundings or vice versa is called heat.
as long as no work is done on an isolated system, the internal energy of that system will always remain constant. This is the first law of thermodynamics.
Steam engines essentially have three components.
1. A hot energy source
2. A device that transforms that heat into work
3. Finally, there’s the cold sink,
Heat cannot be transferred from low-temperature systems to high-temperature systems without work being done elsewhere. This is our second key insight.
When we talk about entropy, we're actually talking about disorder.....Gas has high entropy. Energy and matter in a crystal, by comparison, are neatly arranged. Crystals thus have low entropy. Whenever heat is transferred without work being required, the entropy of a system and its surroundings increases. There's the theory.
A heat engine without a cold sink is simply impossible: the cold sink must be present if entropy is to increase within this universe, and this is why it is so vital.
When the temperature is higher, the range of possible energy levels is greater. This means the probability of predicting the energy level of any given molecule is lower. And this.....the greater uncertainty about the energy level occupied by molecules-is what we have in mind when we talk about increased disorder.......At absolute zero, the Boltzmann distribution shows us that only the lowest energy state-the ground state-is occupied by molecules.
If we pick an atom at random, we will have absolute certainty that it will be occupying this ground state.
Every time a system produces heat, as when burning fuel creates steam, that system has to pay a "heat tax.".....Imagine you're burning a hydrocarbon like coal in a cylinder
To accommodate this extra [gas] volume, the piston is driven outward. This requires work, and some of the heat produced by the reaction is used to cover this energy expenditure.
Some reactions work in the opposite way:......The system has more energy that it can release as heat. Think of it as a kind of tax rebate......When physicists interested in thermodynamics take account of this tax, they use a concept called enthalpy.....Taxation, however, cuts both ways. As we've seen, when it produces work, it pays a heat tax; when it produces heat, on the other hand, it pays a work tax. This is because of the second law of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics has two accounting tools.....First off, there's Helmholtz energy. This is the total amount of work a system is capable of producing......Then there's Gibbs energy-the total amount of work a system is capable of during processes
The first thing we need to say about the third law is that it draws on an important insight into cyclical processes....No finite sequence of cyclic processes can cool a body to absolute zero. This means there must be a point at which the cooling process ends and at which its entropy cannot be lowered any further.
And this is what the third law of thermodynamics states, albeit with a couple of modifications. First off, the law only applies to certain substances-so-called perfectly crystalline substances. These have zero entropy when their temperature is absolute zero. Other substances have non-zero entropy when their temperature reaches absolute zero....We say that crystalline substances converge on a common entropy value of "zero," even though we don't know its absolute value.
The third law can therefore be summarized as: the entropy of all perfectly crystalline substances at absolute zero temperature is zero.
Final summary
The zeroth law of thermodynamics governs thermal equilibrium and introduces the concept of temperature. The first law states that the internal energy of an isolated system remains constant so long as no work is done on it. The second law introduces the concept of entropy-a measure of disorder in energy-and states that entropy in the universe must always increase during a spontaneous change. Finally, the third law tells us that the entropy of all crystalline substances approaches the same value as the temperature nears absolute zero. These are the pillars of thermodynamics”.
OK, What’s my overall take on the book. Well it is certainly interesting and I certainly learned some new things ....like the Zeroeth law and the fact that only perfectly crystalline substances have zero entropy at absolute zero. It’s fairly clearly written but I still have some issues in absorbing it. Maybe some diagrams would have helped and maybe there are diagrams in the full book. But happy to give it four stars. show less

Not every invention of the chemical sciences is good for the environment, but there are exceptions. Before the career of a William Perkin in the 19th century, purple dye apparently came from sea snails, an animal source, and this method made the creation of color dyes both very expensive, difficult to obtain, and destructive of animal life; now it comes from a chemical dye that is not an animal product at all.

There was pollution from the new chemical dyes, though, although ‘green show more chemistry’ tries to minimize disruption to the environment from chemicals. And of course, even before I read this book I had to laugh (though not with mirth) at the ad for shoes from “all natural” materials, made from animals, factory farmed, most like, and doomed to be slaughtered as though they’d done something wrong.

It’s not always easy or obvious reconciling chemistry and science-and-technology, with ecology and science-and-nature, but of course, the thing will have to be done for us to be happy in the future. show less

"Anarchy", "indolence", and "ignorance" as grounding concepts for a non-frivolous account of the laws of mechanics (classical and quantum), thermodynamics, and electromagnetics? Yes, surprisingly, and physical chemist Atkins's account is a fresh and innovative one indeed. He gets away with saying that nothing much happened at the Big Bang. In the realm of fundamental constants, he suggests some radical revaluations and redimensionalizations that physicists could adopt. (E.g., they could show more eliminate the Boltzmann constant and redefine entropy as a pure number. And they could measure temperatures in inverse zeptojoules or in picoseconds!) show less