I read Patrick Briggs' response concerning a useable
junior/senior-level statistical thermo text. Our course has also
evolved from a purely statistical thermo course (using Kittel &
Kroemer) to a classical & statistical thermo course. Two years ago, I
used Bauman's text (J. Wiley). It was very precisely and accurately
written, but it got too bogged down in details to make it manageable
for our needs, so this year I chose Espinola's text as an example of
a more concise presentation. It is a much more straightforward text,
and its structure is just about right for a three-hour, one-semester
course like ours. Having completed about 3/4 of thetext, I have two
reservations about Espinola's book: The homework problems are much
more limited in scope and variety than many other texts, so I have
had to supplement them from time to time. The greater difficulty has
to do with the large number of typos and errors in the text. The
author provides two type-written pages' worth of errata in the
Instructor's Manual, and I have found at least that many additional
typos. After a while, this gets aggravating. This is a first
printing, so I hope many of these can get cleaned up in subsequent
printings. All in all, this text works well, but it's a little rough
around the edges right now.
Jeff Braun
Physics Department
University of Evansville
Evansville, IN 47722
braun@charm.evansville.edu