DISCOVER ENTROPY AND THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS: A PLAYFUL WAY OF DISCOVERING A LAW OF NATURE

I have two views on this excellent book (or envision two uses of it, if you wish). I put them down separately below, for a general reader and for a physical chemistry teacher:1. A note for a reader interested in understanding of the key principle of nature in the most efficient way-------------------------------------------------------------This book helps you approach the most confusing (and misinterpreted) concepts in thermodynamics: entropy and the Second Law. The author designed a series of simulation-games, which are easy to picture or actually reproduce to observe results (the website also has simulations to view). The results lead you to building your own feel for why spontaneous changes occur in systems with many particles. You, generally, do not need math to find that out--only enough imagination.As I just mentioned, this book is not giving you a mathematical route to definitions of Second Law and entropy but, rather, helps you harness your common sense for this task. Indeed, everything what we see around and know obeys the Second Law. This book helps you to use your natural, observer's knowledge for what the law of spontaneous change is to grasp its details, presented in an easy context of games of marbles. In a later section the author translates the "language of marbles" into terms of physics and thermodynamics.This book is very much like a real scientific study the author guides the reader through. If you are looking for entertainment book or an accessible general-overview text, this a wrong book to pick. To fully experience a joy of discovery of the most fundamental principle in Nature you will have to use some patience to sit through all exercises (games) designed by the author. There are no statements like "trivial to show"--the author truly leads you step-by-step and you never lose feeling that this journey is all still "under your control".Most important feeling I had after I was done with these exercises: no more fog or mystery is left around the concept of entropy and its meaning for me.2. A note for a teacher of Physical Chemistry------------------------------------------------I would like to mention one important application of the approach presented in this book. I am teaching a Physical Chemistry class for Biology majors. The thermodynamics and, specifically, entropy are the most confusing parts for my students. They generally try to "endure" this discussion, learn to reproduce the relationships for the exam--only to happily forget them as soon as they can afterwards. In my opinion, this is because all thermodynamics is taught in a historical prospective, asking a student to follow its 400-year-long track. This is natural but not the most productive way of teaching this important science. Modern students are already accustomed to thinking that the matter is atomistic, they have general sense of what probability and information is. Why don't we use this background to advantage of their learning?The author of this book designed an easy-to-follow scheme of delivering the ideas of spontaneous change leading to formulation of the Second Law. The entropy comes as an application of Shannon's Measure of Information to thermodynamics of atomistic matter. I believe, this type of discussion coupled with Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases should precede topics of thermodynamics. This is what I am trying to implement in my own teaching.

As a Chemical Engineer, I've always had a difficult time fully understanding the concept of entropy. I was taught this concept from the Classical Thermodynamics point of view and learned how to effectively use it to solve problems associated with, for example, chemical reaction and phase equilibria. However, I never really understood what I was doing from a molecular standpoint. Hence my resulting excitement at reading this wonderful book.Inspired by the work of Claude Shannon, Arieh Ben-Naim created a set of very clever computer simulations involving marbles and boxes to visually demonstrate - - - very good and colorful figures, by the way - - - the link between Information Theory and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Especially instructive to me was seeing how the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution easily evolves from this simple and yet very powerful approach. Ben-Naim's patience is carefully walking me, the reader, through this demonstration and also through a discussion about how these results relate to the 2nd Law, including a visually-enhanced discussion of how the slope of the entropy-energy curve corresponds to inverse-temperature as per Clausius' equation dS = dQ/T, was very much welcomed.I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to truly understand what entropy really is.

It has been known in some quarters that "elementary" does not mean "easy".Professor Ben-Naim now demonstrates that "playful" does not mean "easy" either. I do want to commend Ben-Naim for putting a quantitative concept of information and elements of Shannon's theory to the fore in a teaching text - to my mind, there cannot be too much of this. In this respect chapters 1 through 6 of the book are extremely welcome.Elementary mathematical representations of physical and chemical processes are aptly given and discussed along the way.In spite of Ben-Naim's intentions, however, you cannot proceed from "information" to "physical entropy" in this book without previously being acquainted with the latter. In this sense you do not "discover" entropy and the second law. You do learn about the use of elementary information theory as a tool for reasoning and theorizing, about the approach to statistical equilibrium, about statistical fluctuations. Ben-Naim's book is not a sequentially spun tale, it is uncomfortable to read at times. In the spirit of engineering Ben-Naim relies heavily on repetition and redundancy.Unfortunately a number of mistakes and errata have survived the edition of the book which will not be detailed. However, one serious mistake in section 7.3.5, page 211, must be mentioned: in the relevant paragraph Ben-Naim attempts to improve on Gibbs while contradicting his own numerous references to and discussion of statistical fluctuations. It looks as if an unwarranted afterthought was hastily inserted into the text.A carefully revised second edition of this book will certainly be quite valuable to high-school teachers, beginning college students and ambitious students generally, both science and non-science, at any age. A thoroughly revised edition might also improve language and, perhaps, remove the word "playful" from the title. It does not seem helpful at all. It is just a word, but if Shannon was ever right, words are everything.I found the price too steep. It may not be so to people making 10 dollars an hour, but that is not the average rate on planet Earth at all. Cheaper paper and a cheaper binding will not detract from the learning value of this book.Bitching aside, I am glad to have this book on my shelves.

Prof Arieh Ben-Naim most lucidly defines Entropy in terms of information and frees this most misunderstood and misinterpreted topic from the shackles of order/disorder, the universe, spread or quality of energy. The title claims "Playful Way" but the book requires careful reading. It is highly recommended to engineers and laypersons interested in knowing Entropy.

This is an improved version of Ben-Naim's first book intended to simplify the concept of entropy, that is "Entropy Demystified". To some degree it is an attempt improve on his games approach to entropy through probability in simple games such as coin tosses and shaking marbles in containers. There are some differences in that he introduces certain constraints into the games including the so-called "string length" and "cloth area" which represent a given constant energy for the system. This is equivalent to allowing the system to undergo random motions with a given constraint which restricts its freedom of motion.The book itself is written to make the ideas and games presented as simple as possible and Ben-Naim is certainly absolutely certain of his understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Throughout he maintains his connection to information in the sense of the number of questions you must ask of a system in order to locate each individual particle. He also clarifies some previous issues which existed in the earlier book. For example: one problem was the fact that there are multiple ways to ask such questions which means that the approach of asking such questions is observer dependent; the author resolves this question by noting that the way the questions are asked is irrelevant to the answer.At times the repetition of the games becomes a lttle dull but in essence the explanations are necessary and this book is a vast improvement upon the earlier one. The final chapter which translates the results and concepts used in the games approach, introduced in the earlier chapters, to the real world is also much better than the earlier book. I found that this book is a good way to introduce the idea of entropy through the idea of probability games and it could provide a good additional reading on the side as part of a course in statistical thermodynamics.Throughout, it is clear that the second law of thermodynamics is no ordinary law of physics in the sense of a given metaphysical interpretation of the world such as an atomistic one (that is, a purely mechanical reductionistic one where macroscopic properties are derived directly from microscopic ones of unchanging particles interacting). It becomes clear that it is a result of mathematical laws rather than physical ones. Whether this interpretation is correct does not matter, it is the impression created in the book which matters.All in all and excellent introduction to entropy and as a helpful guide in any course on the subject.