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The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal, and from the unfurling of a leaf to the course of life itself - everything is directed and constrained by four simple laws. They establish fundamental concepts such as temperature and heat, and reveal the arrow of time and even the nature of energy itself. Peter Atkins' powerful and compelling introduction explains what the laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics. Guiding the reader from the Zeroth Law to the Third Law, he introduces the fascinating concept of entropy, and how it not only explains why your desk tends to get messier, but also how its unstoppable rise constitutes the engine of the universe.
Uses illustrations to discuss the various chemical reactions, both simple and complex, between atoms and molecules.
Table of contents
A primer for anyone who would like to understand chemistry. If humans had not harnessed chemistry, we would all literally still be living in the Stone Age. Peter Atkins celebrates the importance of this most fundamental science. In non-technical lay language, he explains its concepts, components, and methods.
In this scientific 'Credo', Peter Atkins considers the universal questions of origins, endings, birth, and death to which religions have claimed answers. With his usual economy, wit, and elegance, unswerving before awkward realities, Atkins presents what science has to say. While acknowledging the comfort some find in belief, he declares his own faith in science's capacity to reveal the deepest truths.
Most people remember chemistry from their schooldays as largely incomprehensible, a subject that was fact-rich but understanding-poor, smelly, and so far removed from the real world of events and pleasures that there seemed little point, except for the most introverted, in coming to terms with its grubby concepts, spells, recipes, and rules. Peter Atkins wants to change all that. In this Very Short Introduction to Chemistry, he encourages us to look at chemistry anew, through a chemist's eyes, in order to understand its central concepts and to see how it contributes not only towards our material comfort, but also to human culture. Atkins shows how chemistry provides the infrastructure of our...
Who can deny the significance of food? It has a central role in our health and pleasure as well as in our economy, politics and culture. Food in Society provides a social science perspective on food systems and demonstrates the rich variety of disciplinary and theoretical contexts of food studies. While hunger and malnutrition remain a reality in many countries, for some food has become an experience rather than a sustenance. This book addresses the different worldwide understandings of food through thematic chapters and a wide range of material including: description of the political economy of the food chain, from production to the point of sale; analysis of global issues of supply and demand; critical debate of environmental and health aspects of food, including GM food, the role of habits, taboos, age and gender in food consumption. Each chapter contains a guide to further reading and to websites of relevance to food. Extensively illustrated, this book is essential reading for students of food studies in the social sciences and humanities.
Explains how scientists first observed the second law of thermodynamics, discusses its connection with living things, and looks at the nature of structure and chaos
Atkins' Physical Chemistry: Molecular Thermodynamics and Kinetics is designed for use on the second semester of a quantum-first physical chemistry course. Based on the hugely popular Atkins' Physical Chemistry, this volume approaches molecular thermodynamics with the assumption that students will have studied quantum mechanics in their first semester. The exceptional quality of previous editions has been built upon to make this new edition of Atkins' Physical Chemistry even more closely suited to the needs of both lecturers and students. Re-organised into discrete 'topics', the text is more flexible to teach from and more readable for students. Now in its eleventh edition, the text has been ...
A 'travel guide' to the periodic table, explaining the history, geography and the rules of behaviour in this imagined land. The Periodic Kingdom is a journey of imagination in which Peter Atkins treats the periodic table of elements - the 109 chemical elements in the world, from which everything is made - as a country, a periodic kingdom, each region of which corresponds to an element. Arranged much like a travel guide, the book introduces the reader to the general features of the table, the history of the elements, and the underlying arrangement of the table in terms of the structure and properties of atoms. Atkins sees elements as finely balanced living personalities, with quirks of character and certain, not always outward, dispositions, and the kingdom is thus a land of intellectual satisfaction and infinite delight.