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Thermodynamics: Four Laws That Move the Universe

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Thermodynamics: Four Laws That Move the Universe

By: Jeffrey C. Grossman, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Jeffrey C. Grossman
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About this listen

Nothing has had a more profound impact on the development of modern civilization than thermodynamics. Thermodynamic processes are at the heart of everything that involves heat, energy, and work, making an understanding of the subject indispensable for careers in engineering, physical science, biology, meteorology, and even nutrition and culinary arts. Get an in-depth tour of this vital and fascinating science in 24 enthralling lectures suitable for everyone from science novices to experts who wish to review elementary concepts and formulas.

Professor Jeffrey Grossman of MIT uses the four laws of thermodynamics as a launching point to discuss foundational concepts that are critical pillars of science and engineering - ideas such as entropy, chemical potential, Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, osmotic pressure, heat capacity, eutectic melting, and the Carnot cycle. These and other ideas shed light on many phenomena in the natural world, and they are the analytical tools that engineers use to create new devices and technologies. At the end of these lectures, you'll truly appreciate the elegance and importance of thermodynamic principles. Also, you'll have unlocked the secrets to a fascinating aspect of our universe.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 The Great Courses (P)2014 The Teaching Company, LLC
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What listeners say about Thermodynamics: Four Laws That Move the Universe

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Doesn't work as an audiobook

Great lecturer and interesting topic, but it simply doesn't work as an audio course. Can't see the experiments, the complex graphs he uses as the basis to demonstrate ideas and it's pretty much impossible to penetrate the maths without being able to see the formulas.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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A good listen

deep and broad. not my specialist area but interesting and well presented. I will need to read pdf to get to grips the maths and experiments.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A little difficult to follow

I'm struggling through this audio lecture. There is a couple of problems with this. 1)during the lectures he does experiments 2) lots of algebra. It would be OK if those equations and experiments were in the notes but there not so little difficult

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A good solid read.

Amazing insight and easy to understand and follow with lots of fascinating little details and facets that keep you listening.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Fascinating material but not suitable for Audible

A great series of lectures on a fascinating topic, delivered with enthusiasm and zeal. However, these were obviously created as video lectures and don't translate well to audio alone. Not being able to see the demonstration experiments was frustrating but there are examples of these that can be looked up on YouTube. The bigger frustration was the frequent references to graphs and equations that we could not see. Too many times, the lecturer says things like, "take a look at this graph, see how it rises here?". It's an audio book so no, we cannot see what you are pointing at! I thought at least the graphs would be included in the accompanying PDF but most of them aren't. The same goes for the equations. Such a wasted opportunity with such rich source material . It could be so much better with a few tweaks to make the lectures suitable for Audible.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great but PDF and video required

Great lectures, engaging and fascinating but lack accompanying video and need to refer to PDF.

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Excellent for beginners aswell as experts

Having studied mechanical engineering. I found this an excellent revision as well as learning new things I never thought of. Delves into more of chemistry than anything else (as expected).
However the course requires video to see the experiments and pictures to visualise graphs. So audible version 4 star, but if it were a video then a 5 star.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great content but not ideal for audio

This course deserves to be ranked more highly. It's one of the few science courses in this series on audible which actually is more than a generalist overview, providing a comprehensive survey of one of the most fundamental topics in physics.

The speaker is excellent and the course content is superb. Unfortunately this is another case in which it is simply the audio from a video lecture and as such many of the demonstrations and visual aids which are referred to are obviously missing so listening to it on the bus without any way to access other materials can sometimes be a little frustrating.

Still, more courses like this (with perhaps a little more care in translating from AV to just A) would be greatly appreciated

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12 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Awesome lectures

great and interesting topic, motivating and easy digestible, but there is one big problem - lectures are heavily based on visual aids which mostly not available which is highly disappointing!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Half-Painted Ideas Each Chapter We Will Come Back

I wish he would get to the point sometimes, we will do that in the next chapter or later repeatedly, which just stutters your growth in the subject. He may think he is doing a great story, but if he did stories, jokes like that I could feel my eye lids droop or my yawn reflex, get a good exercise.

I just felt that he could have broken it down a lot better, he goes round the solar system to get to his point. He may think he is developing a greater depth of picture, I didn't like the detour.

Example the first law of thermodynamic, he did it brilliantly in later chapters with its history and how Joules improved upon its concept.

However, you will have to go through a multiple detours to get there... And we will come back to that later on.. SIGH, again, and again and again!

It should have been in the first chapter or very near the beginning.

Don't paint half a picture then come back to it five chapters later.

When it is done more than twelves times, means you have NOT understand the concept of beginning, middle, and end.


To blunt, don't waffle be *CONCISE* Maybe, you need to think do I understand how to present, from this audio book.

No, you wing it, through you assumption. If the oral presenters of the past or Shakespeare did like you they would be paupers. If they did do it, they would do it with a lot more finesse and ability, that's for sure!


He does NOT have the ability to do a Catherine wheel type of story telling to cut back to previous chapters or ideas.


Clever chap, but on presentation, very poor.

Teach, don't treat it like a cooking TV show where you come back to the Oven, ding! and here is the ...Yours is doh!

If he does his lectures like this I feel sorry for his students, do they give them circular notepad or timers that they can oh, go back four pages in the note books, because he spoke about that 20 minutes ago, they are related - SIGH

Cooking book teaching, we will come back to that in ...

It felt like broken sentences or topics never complete in any chapter, which it should have been; especially when learning the subject for the first time.

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