Maxwell's Demon: Why Warmth Disperses and Time Passes

By Iris Murdoch

Book Overview

If you want to know what's happening in the world, follow the heat. Why can't your coffee "steal" heat from the air to stay piping hot? Why can't Detroit make a car that's 100 percent efficient? Why can't some genius make a perpetual motion machine? The answers lie in the field of thermodynamics, the study of heat, which turns out to be the key to an astonishing number of scientific puzzles, including why time inexorably runs in only one direction. In Warmth Disperses and Time Passes- The History of Heat , physics professor Hans Christian von Baeyer tells the story of heat through the lives of the scientists who discovered it. With his trademark elegant prose, eye for lively detail, and gift for lucid explanation, Professor von Baeyer turns the contemplation of a cooling coffee cup into a beguiling portrait of the birth of a science with relevance to almost every aspect of our lives. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679433422
• ISBN13: 9780679433422
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Warmth Disperses and Time Passes

Also titled Temperature and Time Flow Down in Europe; Bayer does an excellent job in explaining this physical phenomenon. I heartily recommend this book for armatures, students, and physicists wanting a fresh perspective.

Have fun with this book !

This is the best book about thermodynamics I have ever read ! In my opinion, it makes more to the understanding of this difficult and so misundertood discipline than any other "theoretical" book. Reading this is a funny and pleasant experience! It's like an adventure book, as it relives the history of the men who built the discipline of thermodynamics, and the curious and interesting circustances that brought them to their...

Thermodynamics without tears or mathematics!

Buy this book if you have given any thought to why coffee cools and orange juice always gets warm. This extremely well written book deals with the most important thoughts some of the most outstanding scientific thinkers throughout history have given to our concepts of heat and energy. What is really striking about the book is that it does so in a readily understood manner without resorting to a single formula or diagram...

Delightful Demon

This is a delightful account of thermodynamics written by an author with profound understanding of the subject. Being a physics/math type myself, I was occasionally frustrated by the absence of diagrams and equations. However, this is a popular account and not meant to be all things to all people on this topic. I'm happy to recommend it.

Brillian connection between information and thermodynamics

"Maxwell's Demon" is a thought provoking examination of the connection of information and thermodynamics. The demon was invented by Maxwell, one of the founders of thermodynamics and electromagnetic field theory, to challenge the Second Law of Thermodynamics: you can't get run an engine from a heat source which is at one temperature. The little demon uses his intellect to apparently beat the Second Law by sorting hot from...