stekas@hou2g.UUCP (J.STEKAS) (03/24/84)
Thermodynamics is certainly true, rigorously. But what thermo
doesn't give you is a physical definition of entropy. So maybe
a third school of thought is that thermodynamics is just a para-
meterization without statistical mechanics to define the entropy.
JimShinbrot.WBST@Xerox.ARPA (04/16/84)
re: "Thermodynamics is certainly true, rigorously...." I think some common sense should be thrown into this fray. I say thermodynamics is rigorously untrue. This is so because the subject is not restricted to thermoSTATICS, as it ought to be. Quasi-statics (remember thermo. 101?) , while perhaps necessary to achieving comprehensible results, are misleading in that the results are seldom CORRECT ones. If anyone doubts this, I give you the internal combustion engine, and challenge the reader to show me how more than 10-fold volume, pressure, and temperature increases within, typically, 1 to 5 milliseconds can possibly be termed quasi-static. External combustion engines, Stirling engines, and other text-book examples are likewise not correctly, nor even approximately, described by thermostatics. The fact that we speak of thermodynamics as a correct science shows how easily we can mislead ourselves into accepting fallacious axioms when it seems convenient to do so. Few idealized problems, and almost no real world ones are quasi-static, and those that are are singularly uninteresting. Contrarily yours, Troy Shinbrot