Table of Contents

1: Introduction
2: Some Clarification from Another Direction
3: The Probability Connection
4: Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics
5: The Presumed Extensivity of Entropy
6: Nonequilibrium States
7: Steady-State Processes
8: Sources and Time-Dependent Proceses
9: Thermal Driving
10: Application to Fluid Dynamics
11: Irreversibility, Relaxation, and the Approach to Equilibrium
12: Entropy Production and Dissipation Rates
A: Perturbation Theory
B: Dissipative Currents and Galilean Invariance
C: Analytic Continuation of Covariance Functions

About the Author

Walter T. Grandy, Jr.
Professor of Physics, Emeritus
University of Wyoming
Professor of Physics, University of Wyoming, 1963-1998.
Visiting Professor: University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; University of Tübingen, Germany; University of Sydney, Australia.

Reviews

`In his delightful little book, Entropy and the Time Evolution of Macroscopic Systems, Walter T. Grandy Jr aims to bring a wider appreciation for the meaning of entropy from the probability-based point of view....Written in an accessible style, the book makes numerous little-known connections between macroscopic and microscopic expressions for entropy and entropy production...Filled with many examples, Grandys thought-provoking exposition will be of
interest for years to come. I would recommend it to any serious student of statistical physics.'
P. Salamon, Physics Today
`The book addresses matters which are often poorly dealt with in other standard texts on statistical mechanics. I think that many advanced researchers in the field may well want to buy it in order to broaden their own perhaps incomplete view of the subject.

'
John Cardy, University of Oxford
`When I was first asked to review this manuscript, I did not know what to expect. Many people who decide to base statistical mechanics on information theory seem to choose this path because it supplies an easily applied algorithm leading directly to the distribution functions needed for calculations. By blindly accepting PME (which some other authors call "maxent"), one can avoid a lot of difficult reasoning about the relation between macroscopic
measurements and microscopic theory. It was a pleasure to find that this was not the approach of the present manuscript. Rather Grandy has taken a very scholarly approach. He does, indeed, present the "maxent"
algorithm, but only after preparing the ground by going over the historical background, the logical background, and to an extent appropriate to a physics book, the philosophical background.'
Robert Mazo, University of Oregon