Steps Toward Continuum Thermodynamics

Abstract

In this closing chapter I hope to give you a final impression of the power of the concepts used in this book. The general law of balance of entropy has guided us through the development of introductory thermodynamics What seemed to be so difficult for Planck’s teachers to accept has served us well so far. This should encourage us to extend thermodynamics to the general case of continuous processes. The benefits will be immediate: you will get a first brief look at some of the more advanced examples of thermal processes to which we could only allude before.

The impression [that my dissertation (1879)] made upon the public of physics at that time was naught. ...Kirchhoff rejected its contents expressly with the remark that the concept of entropy... could not legitimately be applied to irreversible processes.

M. Planck, 1948