Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics

quibono

Nice, I’ll definitely check this out. You might want to look at optimising the PDF, it’s sitting at 40MB right now.

tux3

Love the price transparency, the obvious followup question is where the other ~85% of the pie goes when I buy a ~50€ paper book, if the author only earns a little under 15%? I imagine printing will be about 2 to 5€, if it's not ultra cheap print on demand refuse. Is the rest all for publishers and Amazon dot com?

lain98

Engineering books are very expensive in my country. I want to give calculus a spin. Spivak is a hundred dollars.

longemen3000

Hello, The textbook seems nice and clear. The only nitpick i have is that it should talk more about equations of state. I understand that it may not be the focus of the text, but mentioning the current state of equations of state (SAFTs, cubics, multiparameter) would help guide readers looking on how to generate their own steam tables for their fluid of interest, even if the advice is just "go use CoolProp" On the other hand, i really like the ilustrations on turbomachinery, helps ground the theoretical content.

heykjo

I'd love to send you a few euros; but the checkout process requires both an email and a cell number. Are those strictly necessary to authorize a cc payment?

alan-stark

Tangentially related: It appears that TD ideas pop up in diffusion models, VAEs and neural net training dynamics. Any author/reading advice on links between thermodynamics, information, and neural nets?

fermatf

Cool, putting that to my reading list. And the pricing comparison is fun!

rramadass

Nice. Good to see actual hard science books popularized and available for free. The textbook industry is a criminal cartel shafting both the students/knowledge seekers and authors/professors. Hence i really appreciate the way you have made the pdf available both for free and for a nominal price; so thank you. We need more hard science (Physics/Chemistry/Biology/etc.) content (books/articles/videos/etc.) on HN. For example, the interdisciplinary field of "Materials Science" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science ) is one the most practical and important for our modern world and yet there is hardly any discussions/popularization about it.

ginkgotree

This is awesome. Also, this quote feels relevant: "Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics." - David Goodstein's States of Matter, Introduction