Engineering books are very expensive in my country. I want to give calculus a spin. Spivak is a hundred dollars.
All textbooks are free if you know where to look
Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#22Hello,
The textbook seems nice and clear. The only nitpick i have is that it should talk more about equations of state. I understand that it may not be the focus of the text, but mentioning the current state of equations of state (SAFTs, cubics, multiparameter) would help guide readers looking on how to generate their own steam tables for their fluid of interest, even if the advice is just "go use CoolProp"
On the other hand, i really like the ilustrations on turbomachinery, helps ground the theoretical content.
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ~750 pngs are about 15 megabytes. The 77 photographic images are 22 megabytes. Somewhat a death of 1000 cuts. I used https://www.xpdfreader.com/pdfimages-man.html to extract them and take a look.
Thanks for that. At first glance, it looks like that is a good place to be, regarding images. I will still investigate when I find time.
Probably the main thing you could look at is what pixel density you want in your images.
For example, there's a 1 megabyte image of a tanker trailer that is displayed at about 1.5 x 3 inches, you could get rid of 3/4 of those pixels (going from ~400 ppi to ~200 ppi) and not really change the quality of the image for a casual reader.
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#24Hello, The textbook seems nice and clear. The only nitpick i have is that it should talk more about equations of state. I understand that it may not be the focus of the text, but mentioning the current state of equations of state (SAFTs, cubics, multiparameter) would help guide readers looking on how to generate their own steam tables for their fluid of interest, even if the advice is just "go use CoolProp" On the ot…
Thank you! To be honest I think there is not much there because when I started 17 years ago my technical skills were much shallower, plotting a diagram to visualize/compare two models would have been quite a lot of work. But if I can be frank, at undergraduate level playing with equations of state is not expected nor a requirement. I’m happy to just say "there are others and they all have some common things". I‘d much rather the students and I spend our energy wrapping our heads around say the concept of entropy and what it allows us to do. Regardless, I appreciate your comment muchly (and shall look up CoolProp tomorrow).
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for that. At first glance, it looks like that is a good place to be, regarding images. I will still investigate when I find time.
Probably the main thing you could look at is what pixel density you want in your images. For example, there's a 1 megabyte image of a tanker trailer that is displayed at about 1.5 x 3 inches, you could get rid of 3/4 of those pixels (going from ~400 ppi to ~200 ppi) and not really change the quality of the image for a casual reader.
that’s a really good place to start, thank you!
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#26Engineering books are very expensive in my country. I want to give calculus a spin. Spivak is a hundred dollars.
I would bet that you can find used calculus textbooks quite easily.
I did chemical engineering long ago (how long? Computerized process control was just being introduced into the curriculum, and we learned to program in Fortran). I did several calculus courses, but it was always just a matter of memorizing techniques.
Much later, I came across Calculus Made Easy on Project Gutenberg, a textbook from 1914 that actually helped me to understand why calculus works, instead of just treating it like magic.
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#27I'd love to send you a few euros; but the checkout process requires both an email and a cell number. Are those strictly necessary to authorize a cc payment?
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#28Tangentially related: It appears that TD ideas pop up in diffusion models, VAEs and neural net training dynamics. Any author/reading advice on links between thermodynamics, information, and neural nets?
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#29Cool, putting that to my reading list. And the pricing comparison is fun!
Re: Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics
#30Engineering books are very expensive in my country. I want to give calculus a spin. Spivak is a hundred dollars.
Calculus hasn't changed a whole lot. There are probably better books for learning than I used in the 1970s, but I have to believe that you can find pretty decent older calculus texts for not a lot.
Spivak is a different category of calculus text.