Some of the questions are very difficult and I could not find a solutions manual at this moment in time.

They have example problems that show you to work out problems but sometimes the questions at the end of the chapter don't relate to the example so you have to figure them out on your own. Some of them aren't easy either. Sometimes just doing five problems on your own can take hours. You aren't going to like this class very much unless you are good in thermo

I took a course in Thermo as an undergrad, but I basically just learned how to solve the textbook problems to the point where I was able to pass the tests, but I never got a good intuitive understanding of the subject.

My major was EE so one term of Thermo was a required course but not in the mainstream of my studies, so I never needed to understand it in any greater depth.


I recently retired from my career as an EE and have been wanting to become more knowledgable about energy, since I think it is probably the toughest science/engineering issue facing society for the forseeable future.

It dawned on me at some point that if I want to be knowledgable about energy, I need to do more than just read books about energy sources, I need to have a decent grounding in those technical disciplines that energy technologies are based on. The most obvious was Thermodynamics, although I decided I should also beef up my Chemistry.

And I realized, by golly, I can learn this stuff, because of my engineering background and the fact that I'm not too old for my brain to be decomposing too badly so far.

For the moment, I am studying this book on Thermo.

I am really happy with this book. They really cover the material with a lot of rigor and give a ton of examples which really help get an intuitive understanding of what the concepts mean for practical systems.

I haven't finished the book, but am far enough along to be able to judge it. Right now I'm in the chapter on Exergy. I don't believe we ever got into that in the 1st term Thermo I took 30 years ago or so. The Exergy concept really makes a lot of sense in tying everything together and providing a comprehensive approach toward evaluating the efficiency of a particular system.

I do wonder about the notation, though. They denote exergy with an "E", which seems like it could lead to its being mixed up with energy.

Wikipedia says that Exergy is denoted by the letter "B". Not sure where that came from but it seems like a good idea to use a completely different letter for it.

Aside from some minor issues like that, this book seems outstanding to me. I gather it is the predominant textbook for thermo these days. I would say it deserves that status.

I am really looking forward to the later chapters I haven't gotten to yet on the various types of engines and turbos and whatnot.


For the material to really sink in, I know I will need to read the book a second time, but the second pass should go quite a bit faster than the first.

I could be a little biased, as I have one of the authors, Micheal Moran, as a professor, who happens to be not the nicest guy in the world. I don't particularly care for the book because it isn't clear in its written explinations and the examples aren't helpful when trying to solve very complicated problems at the end of each chapter. I often had to search for supplimentary material online to fully understand topics covered in the book. It's also really obnoxious that you have to convert units for litterally every single problem.

This is a very good text book, it is well written and keeps it short and sweet. It gets to the point. One great feature is that it boxes in derivations that are not nessacary to understand, this way you don't get bogged down in a lot of text. There are tons of examples in the book and no mistakes that I could find. You really can read and understand everything from the text, you don't really need a teacher, which is saying alot, because most books are impossible to read and figure out what's going on. I agree the bio part is worthless, but Moran is obviously into that stuff because he always mentioned it in class. It's really not a bad thing...just skip it, who cares if it's in there. Overall if you want a good thermo book, whether it's self taught or in a class, it's a good choice.