Frederick Reif (1927–2019)

Never mind that this book was published in the mid '60s (before I was even born); if you must choose one book to learn from, choose this one. It is so concise, so well thought out that I have yet to encounter a more instructive text on the subject. It contains a fabulous overview of statistical and thermal physics, and -even though the book contains quite a lot of material- I regret that the author (quote) "resisted the tempation to include applications of Onsager's reciprocity relations" show more and other irreversible phenomena. I used to teach physics and chemistry, and I must say that books of this quality just don't seem to be written these days. Given the inherent subtlety of its subject matter and the problems many students have grasping it I therefore strongly recommend using this book to study from. show less

What the title says. Dry and a bit wordy, but still highly useful.

This was the textbook for the introductory thermodynamics course at Cornell circa 1991. Perfectly serviceable.

It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/applying-cognitive-science-to-education