Study Aid Review: Schaums Outline of Thermodynamics for Engineers, 3rd Edition

 

Thermodynamics is a class that many engineering students end up taking either because it is required for the particular branch of engineering they are majoring in, or because it is a part of a group of a few electives that they have to pick from, and it is the least-bad option. I was in the latter group, as it was one of three classes I had to pick from when getting my electrical engineering degree, and it was the best of the bunch. 

Thermodynamics is a class that is basically a blend of physics and chemistry. Thermo basically, combines what you learn in the thermodynamics chapters in chemistry and the thermodynamics chapters in physics, makes the problems a bit different than those in either class, and then gives you an entire semester of that. If you have a really good teacher who goes through a lot of examples and makes everything clear, then you may not need this to really teach yourself the subject. But, even in that situation, you will probably come across a homework problem or two that you get stuck on, and there are enough example problems in here that you can probably find a pretty close example to use as a guide. 

This is one of the outlines that does teach you some of the theory but does not go into it as much as a textbook will, and then has a decent amount of worked-out examples and some problems in which you are just provided the answer. I did notice that the chapters were laid out a bit differently than they were in my particular textbook, and this definitely included material that we did not cover in class. But, I was always able to find what I was looking for, and did not notice a bunch of mistakes (although I did not look at or try to work through every problem). So, overall, I think it is a good resource that can help you get through a thermodynamics class as painlessly as possible.