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This digital document is a journal article from Energy & Buildings, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The International Building Physics Toolbox (IBPT) is a software library developed originally for heat, air and moisture system analysis in building physics. The toolbox is constructed as a modular structure of standard building elements, using the graphical programming language Simulink. To enable development of the toolbox, a common modelling platform is defined: a set of unique communication signals, material database and documentation protocol. The IBPT is an open source and available on the Internet. Any user can utilize, expand and develop the contents of the toolbox. This paper presents structure and essence of the library. Potential applications of the toolbox are illustrated through examples. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1460 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Energy Made Understandable
I strongly agree with the first two reviewers regarding their opinion on this little book. People in general usually take the concept of energy for grant despite the importance of energy in our every day lives! However, if you are serious about a true understanding on the exact concept of energy, its characteristics, and implications for our modern world, this classic book is a good one to start with. The writing style is descriptive and informal. Hence, a proficiency in maths or physics is not compulsory. Another interesting feature of this book is the development of key concepts and ideas that centers around historical perspectives. Not only the concept of energy is vividly presented but also the story of scientists working behind these key concepts. This book also includes the story about the development of early heat engines (e.g., steam engines, air engines, and internal combustion engines) so it is also beneficial to technicians who work on these engines and wanting to learn more about the basics of thermodynamics. This vintage is fun to read and I do not hesitate to recommend this book to general readers, regardless of their backgrounds.

Doy Sundarasaradula
May 20, 2009

A Look at Energy and the Feild of Science Itself
A "lucid and entertaining history of the concept of energy," as well as "accessible to all (no math required) and (I am sure) rewarding to both naïve and highly sophisticated readers."I could not have put it better myself. I have to say the first two chapters on the workings of steam engines made me drop my expectations of the book, but after those first chapters the book became enthralling.It greatly exceeded my expectations.It delivers a forceful attack on Sir Francis Bacon, as well as addressing the line between science and pseudo-science. The book gives the narrative of how Joule got credit for thermodynamics over Mayer, all the while exploring the way credit is given in science.The book even goes on to discuss metaphysical reasoning v. empirical evidence!Truly a wondrous book that not only explains energy, but tells the interesting story of it's discovery, and explores the philosophy of science all in one.

Reads like a good novel.
The two titles of this book (The Story of Energy, 1934 and The Concept of Energy Simply Explained, 1964) are accurate descriptions of its contents.Above all, it is a lucid and entertaining history of the concept of energy, accessible to all (no math required) and (I am sure) rewarding to both naïve and highly sophisticated readers.Its explanation of the Carnot cycle and its narrative of Mayer's tragic life are simply delightful.It deserves to be published again, so that new generations can enjoy it.If you find it, buy it.It is a rare gem. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Chemistry: Foundations and Applications, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1074 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.

“Chemistry: Foundations and Application” is an accessible four-volume set that covers chemistry’s laws, processes, applications and sub-disciplines, reviews the history of the field, including modern research and practical applications, and includes biographies of scientists past and present. Varied topics that examine and explain chemistry's many branches, including inorganic, industrial, atmospheric and computational chemistry, and biotechnology allow students and general-interest readers alike to explore the myriad ways in which chemistry plays an important role in daily life.

Customer Reviews (1)

He wrote the book on burners
This book is great because my grandfather wrote it! ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Reflectivity measures the fractional amplitude of the reflected electromagnetic field, while reflectance refers to the fraction of incident electromagnetic power that is reflected at an interface. The reflectance is thus the square of the magnitude of the reflectivity. The reflectivity can be expressed as a complex number as determined by the Fresnel equations for a single layer, whereas the reflectance is always a positive real number. In certain fields, reflectivity is distinguished from reflectance by the fact that reflectivity is a value that applies to thick reflecting objects. When reflection occurs from thin layers of material, internal reflection effects can cause the reflectance to vary with surface thickness. Reflectivity is the limit value of reflectance as the surface becomes thick; it is the intrinsic reflectance of the surface, hence irrespective of other parameters such as the reflectance of the rear surface. The reflectance spectrum or spectral reflectance curve is the plot of the reflectivity as a function of wavelength. ... Read more

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This is a graduate level textbook in nanoscale heat transfer and energy conversion that can also be used as a reference for researchers in the developing field of nanoengineering. It provides a comprehensive overview of microscale heat transfer, focusing on thermal energy storage and transport. Chen broadens the readership by incorporating results from related disciplines, from the point of view of thermal energy storage and transport, and presents related topics on the transport of electrons, phonons, photons, and molecules. This book is part of the MIT-Pappalardo Series in Mechanical Engineering. ... Read more

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As conventionqal energy sources such as fossil fuels become increasingly scarce, scientists and engineers will need to rely more and more on new sources such as geothermal, solar, ocean thermal, magnetohydrodynamic, nuclear, and hydrogen energy to meet the world's energy demands.The utilization of all these forms of energy involves the conversion of heat to mechanical energy.

Designed for senior level undergraduates, Energy Conversion develops an understanding of the physical processes involved in the transformation of one form of energy to another.The emphasis is on a description of models of the elementary processes to allow assessment of performance potential and to allow a determintaion of the sensitivity to design choices. Since many energy conversion processes involve the manipulation of gaseous substances, there is heavy emphasis on the description of fluids and gases in particular.Energy conversion processes involve heat and work interactions between a system and its environment, as well as state and property decisions.

In order to arrive at simple, understandable relations, simplifications are made which allow description at the expense of some numerical accuracy.More accurate descriptions can be made with more sophisticated computational tools and nearly all numerical calculations presented are made with the equations developed, so that the student can implement them on a computer and reproduce them with his or her own choice of parameters. In most chapters, problems are presented which are designed to aid the student in the practical applications of the underlying principles of energy conversion to the performance of real engines.

Energy Conversion offers extensive coverage of basic principles, applied thermodynamics, the economics of power plants, turbomachinery, and lucid discussion of the environmental impact of energy conversion. ... Read more

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This book contains the proceedings of the "Forum 90" conducted at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in March 1989. The International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer hosted the meeting, which was designed to assemble international mathematicians to exchange ideas, experience and knowledge about recent achievements in modeling. Specific emphasis was placed on the multi-purpose use of models, their joint application and incorporation into more general models of complex energy conversions plants and systems. Additionally, the forum was expected to enhance a wider use and application of mathematical modeling and computer simulation techniques in the development of new and advanced thermal energy conversion technologies. ... Read more

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It is becoming more and more important to manage energy resources effectively: to maximize their benefits while minimizing the negative environmental impacts. Scientist and engineers are thus faced with the problem of optimizing complex systems subject to constraints from, ecology, economics, and thermodynamics. It is chiefly to the last that the present volume is addressed.

Nonequilibrium thermodynamic approaches, such as finite-time thermodynamics and Second-Law analyses, can provide realistic models and analyses that can be used to search for optimum ways to operate machines and processes.

Intended for physicists, chemists, and engineers, this volume reviews the state of the art in the thermodynamics of energy conversion and transmission. Using examples from solar, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and environmental engineering, the book focuses on the use of thermodynamic criteria for optimizing energy conversion and transmission. The first set of chapters focuses on solar energy conversion; the second set discusses the transfer and conversion of chemical energy (as in internal combustion engines or distillation columns); a concluding set of chapters deals with geometric methods in thermodynamics. ... Read more

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Stochastic Energetics by now commonly designates the emerging field that bridges the gap between stochastic dynamical processes and thermodynamics.

Triggered by the vast improvements in spatio-temporal resolution in nanotechnology, stochastic energetics develops a framework for quantifying individual realizations of a stochastic process on the mesoscopic scale of thermal fluctuations.

This is needed to answer such novel questions as:

Can one cool a drop of water by agitating an immersed nano-particle?

How does heat flow if a Brownian particle pulls a polymer chain?

Can one measure the free-energy of a system through a single realization of the associated stochastic process?

This book will take the reader gradually from the basics to the applications: Part I provides the necessary background from stochastic dynamics (Langevin, master equation), Part II introduces how stochastic energetics describes such basic notions as heat and work on the mesoscopic scale, Part III details several applications, such as control and detection processes, as well as free-energy transducers.

It aims in particular at researchers and graduate students working in the fields of nanoscience and technology.

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The introduction of micro CHP – the simultaneous production of heat and power in a single building based on small energy conversion units such as Stirling and reciprocating engines or fuel cells – is of increasing political and public interest. This book introduces into micro CHP systems and technologies, and presents the results of the first such investigation carried out by four German research bodies.

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Heat exchangers with minichannel and microchannel flow passages are becoming increasingly popular because of their ability to remove large heat fluxes under single-phase and two-phase applications.This book serves as a sourcebook for those individuals involved in the design processes of microchannel flow passages in a heat exchanger.

This book manages to present its findings in a manner that is directly useful to a designer, while a researcher is able to use the information in developing new models, or in identifying research needs.

Each chapter is accompanied by a 'real life' case study.

First book published solely dealing with heat and fluid flow in minichannels and microchannels. ... Read more

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This book is an informal, readable introduction to the basic ideas of thermal physics. It is aimed at making the reader feel comfortable with the extremum principles of entropy and free energies. There is a repeating theme: Molecules (spins) do X to maximize their entropy, and molecules (spins) do XX to minimize their free energy. This finally leads to the idea of the Landau-Ginzburg free energy functional. The author illustrates how powerful the idea is by using two examples from phase transitions.

Contents: Introduction to Thermal Physics; All You Need to Know to Read the Rest; Isolated Thermal Systems; Systems in Contact with a Thermal Reservoir; Open Systems, Flexible Systems, and Two More Energy-like Functions; Energy versus Free Energy; Phases and Phase Transitions; Second-Order Phase Transitions; Landau-Ginzburg Free Energy Functional and Applications; Monte Carlo and Finite-Size Scaling. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A very good overview
This book deserves to be quoted for all the people who want to have a short and very physical introduction to the subject. The book remains at an introductory level but the author covers a lot of subjects without loosing the physical intuition or interpretation at every stage of the text. It is true that the book won't help the student to master the calculations of thermodynamics and statistical physics, but since the introduction the author is very honest on this . A list of the books which may be read to give a further insight on the different chapters is given at the end.
This book has been written to give to the reader a physical understanding of the subject and of the logic behind the mathematical methods generally used in the context of thermal physics.
Surely someone already trained in (statistical) thermodynamics will even more enjoy the reading of this book.
The book is short, easy to read and not expensive (a quality which is not negligible for a science book). For my opinion it is a little jewel. ... Read more