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What you will learn in Thermodynamics & Heat
1. Temperature and Heat Are Not the Same Thing
Two containers, the same energy in, and thermometers that disagree — which settles the question before it can be argued about.
2. Specific Heat and Thermal Mass
Why the same sunshine warms sand and sea so differently, and why a mixture does not settle halfway.
3. Conduction, Convection, Radiation
Three routes heat can take, raced against each other — and a winner that changes with temperature.
4. Latent Heat and Phase Change
Energy pouring in while the thermometer refuses to move. Most of the journey from ice to steam happens at no temperature gain at all.
5. Gas Laws from Bouncing Particles
A pressure gauge that counts real wall collisions, and gas laws that emerge from the collisions rather than being printed beside them.
6. The Four Laws
Zeroth to Third, one small experiment each, with every result computed rather than asserted.
7. Entropy and the Arrow of Time
Sixty particles spread out and never come back, and nothing pushed them. There are simply more ways to be spread out.
8. Heat Engines and the Carnot Limit
An energy budget with a band of waste that will not go away, however the sliders are set.
9. Isothermal and Adiabatic Processes
The same expansion done twice, once with heat flowing in and once sealed, and the work read off as an area.
10. Degrees of Freedom and Equipartition
Count the ways a molecule can move, give each ½kT, and predict a heat capacity — then find out which of the ways the molecule is not using.
11. Mean Free Path and Avogadro's Number
How far a molecule gets before it hits another, why that distance depends on the square of its size, and how many molecules there are to hit.