What's On Display at Feldberg Library

Adventures In Heat and Cold tells the stories of 18 men and women whose pioneering innovations have had far-reaching influence, detailing their technical advances and sharing interesting aspects of the lives of these inventors who, in many cases, are relatively unknown and whose contributions are either unknown or forgotten.

The air conditioner is often hailed as one of the modern world's greatest inventions--yet nearly as often blamed for global disaster. It has changed everything from architecture to people's food habits, saved countless lives, and caused countless deaths. First appearing in 1902, when Willis Carrier, an engineer barely out of college, developed the "Apparatus for Treating Air," everyone assumed it would instantly change the world. But the story of air conditioning and its rise to ubiquity is far from simple. In Cool, Salvatore Basile tracks two fascinating stories: the struggle to perfect an effective cooling device and the effort to convince people that they actually needed such a thing. With a cast of characters ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Richard Nixon and Felix the Cat, Cool showcases the myriad reactions to air conditioning as it was developed and introduced to the world. Here is a unique perspective on a common convenience: how we came to rely on it today and how it might change radically tomorrow.

Exergy provides a systematic overview of new and developed systems, new practical examples, problems and case studies on several key topics ranging from the basics of thermodynamic concepts to advanced exergy analysis techniques in a wide range of applications.

In this collection, the authors evaluate the thermal performance of a ground source heat pump (GSHP) system for cooling a typical household in Tunisia. For this purpose, a complete GSHP system model was built by using TRNSYS simulation program, taking into account the hot climatic conditions of northern Tunisia. Heat-powered adsorption heat pumps offer the advantage of using waste heat sources and renewable thermal energy, thus reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The examples focus on the modeling and measurement of noise levels resulting from heat pumps in the project designing stage and the operation stage.

This book covers an overview and applications of the thermal storage systems used in batteries for the electric automotive industry such as in electric vehicles, thermal storage system in smart grid systems, thermal harvesting for battery-less use for wireless sensor networks, thermo-electric generators and biomedical sensing. The thermal storage system can be used to harvest energy for implementation of battery-less, zero-maintenance and place-and-forget electronic systems. This book has been prepared for the needs of those who seek an application on developing the thermal system.

Only when the power goes off and food spoils do we truly appreciate how much we rely on refrigerators and freezers. In Refrigeration Nation, Jonathan Rees explores the innovative methods and gadgets that Americans have invented to keep perishable food cold--from cutting river and lake ice and shipping it to consumers for use in their iceboxes to the development of electrically powered equipment that ushered in a new age of convenience and health. As much a history of successful business practices as a history of technology, this book illustrates how refrigeration has changed the everyday lives of Americans and why it remains so important today.

Thermal engineering is a specialized sub-discipline of mechanical engineering that focuses on the movement and transfer of heat energy between two mediums or altered into other forms of energy. Thermal engineers must have a strong knowledge of thermodynamics and the processes that convert generated energy from thermal sources into chemical, mechanical, or electrical energy -- as such, thermal engineers can be employed in many industries, particularly in automotive manufacturing, commercial construction, and the HVAC industry. Thermal Design details the physical mechanisms of standard thermal devices while integrating essential formulas and detailed derivations to give a practical understanding of the field to students.

Cooper offers a narrative description of the fits and starts in the development of air-conditioning from 1900 to 1960. She emphasizes the mismatch between the engineering community and the various users who generally misused and misunderstood the systems. The first applications were used for controlling humidity in industrial processes, primarily cotton mills and bakeries. As systems were developed for schools and offices, a great controversy arose as to the efficacy of "open windows" for healthy air versus "unhealthy" sealed-up buildings. Theaters proved to be the key to acceptance: once the public tried air-conditioned movies, the demand grew quickly, even during the Depression. Refrigerator manufacturers then offered window air conditioners, and a mass market developed.

The refrigerator may seem mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of twentieth-century science--lifesaver, food preserver, social liberator. Part historical narrative, part scientific decoder, Chilled looks at early efforts to harness the cold at the ice pits of Persia (Iranians still call their fridges the "ice pit") and ice harvests on the Regents Canal. As people learned more about what cold actually was, scientists invented machines for producing it on demand. The discovery of refrigeration and its applications features a cast of characters that includes the Ice King of Boston, Galileo, Francis Bacon, an expert on gnomes, a magician who chilled a cathedral, a Renaissance duke addicted to iced eggnog, and a Bavarian nobleman from New England. Refrigeration technology has been crucial in some of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last one hundred years, from the discovery of superconductors to the search for the Higgs boson. Refrigeration is needed to make soap, store penicillin, and without it, in vitro fertilization would be impossible. And the fridge will still be pulling the strings behind the scenes as teleporters and intelligent-computer brains turn our science-fiction vision of the future into fact.

Einstein's Fridge tells the incredible epic story of the scientists who, over two centuries, harnessed the power of heat and ice and formulated a theory essential to comprehend our universe.

Heat marks an important moment in our civilization's thinking about global warming. The question is no longer, "Is climate change actually happening?" but "What do we do about it?" George Monbiot offers an ambitious and far-reaching program to cut our carbon dioxide emissions to the point where the environmental scales start tipping back away from catastrophe. Though writing with a spirit of optimism, Monbiot does not pretend it will be easy. The only way to avoid further devastation, he argues, is a 90% cut in CO2 emissions in the rich nations of the world by 2030. In other words, our response will have to be immediate, and it will have to be decisive. In every case he supports his proposals with a rigorous investigation into what works, what doesn't, how much it costs, and what the problems might be. He wages war on bad ideas as energetically as he promotes good ones. And he is not afraid to attack anyone-friend or foe-whose claims are false or whose figures have been fudged. After all, there is no time to waste.

What happens when a radically-new fuel or technology transforms the energy system? How does the energy system evolve at different stages of economic development? What are the implications for people's lives and their environment? Building on an award-winning article, in this exciting book Roger Fouquet investigates the impacts of technological innovations and economic development over the last seven hundred years on our ability to provide heat, power, transport and light. Using a unique data set, collected over a decade, the analysis identifies the forces driving revolutions in energy services. It highlights the tendency of markets to produce ever-cheaper energy services, which in turn incite greater energy consumption. It also examines how these revolutions affect people's well-being and the environment. The framework, analysis and insights in this book offer an original perspective on future energy markets, transitions to low-carbon economies and strategies for addressing climate change.

This illustrated history book traces the growth of heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and refrigerating technology from its ancient beginnings to twentieth century sophistication. Scientific developments are described in the context of how their application influenced technology and buildings, creating a new way of life for the consuming public. Published to commemorate ASHRAE's 100th Anniversary, the oversize volume contains numerous black and white and color illustrations.

The history of artificial cold has been a rather intriguing interdisciplinary subject (physics, chemistry, technology, sociology, economics, anthropology, consumer studies) which, despite some excellent monographs and research papers, has not been systematically exploited. It is a subject with all kinds of scientific, technological as well as cultural dimensions. For example, the common home refrigerator has brought about unimaginably deep changes to our everyday lives, drastically changing eating habits and shopping mentalities.

Home heating networks during the Industrial Revolution helped create the modern dependence on fossil fuel energy in America. Home Fires tells the fascinating story of how changes in home heating over the nineteenth century spurred the growth of networks that helped remake American society. Sean Patrick Adams reconstructs the ways in which the "industrial hearth" appeared in American cities, the methods that entrepreneurs in home heating markets used to convince consumers that their product designs and fuel choices were superior, and how elite, middle-class, and poor Americans responded to these overtures. Adams depicts the problem of dwindling supplies of firewood and the search for alternatives; the hazards of cutting, digging, and drilling in the name of home heating; the trouble and expense of moving materials from place to place; the rise of steam power; the growth of an industrial economy; and questions of economic efficiency, at both the individual household and the regional level. Home Fires makes it clear that debates over energy sources, energy policy, and company profit margins have been around for a long time.

Of the three fundamental methods of measurement-time, length, and temperature-Gino Segrè is convinced that temperature is not only the most subtle but also the most revealing. In this engaging, insightful book, Segrè, a distinguished theoretical physicist, makes his lifelong fascination with temperature the organizing theme of a wide-ranging journey through science, history, and culture. A graceful writer and a nimble synthesizer, Segrè explores how temperature (which we have only recently succeeded in measuring) is bound up with the very essence of both life and inert matter. Why is the internal temperature of most mammals fixed at 98.6 degrees, no matter what climate they inhabit? What do the hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor reveal about the history of our planet? Why has temperature proved to be so much more difficult to measure than distance and time? How does the quest to reach absolute zero relate to the problem of superconductivity in quantum physics? In answering these and hundreds of other temperature-sensitive questions, Segrè unfolds a narrative that is at once compelling, surprising, and brilliantly associative. A wonderful synthesis of science, history, and imagination, A Matter of Degrees uses deep, detailed knowledge of particular fields to open up the big scientific questions of our time.

Edited by the two top experts in the field with a panel of International contributors, this is a comprehensive up-to-date review of research and applications. Starting with the basic physical principles of laser cooling of solids, the monograph goes on to discuss the current theoretical issues being resolved and the increasing demands of growth and evaluation of high purity materials suitable for optical refrigeration, while also examining the design and applications of practical cryocoolers. An advanced text for scientists, researchers, engineers, and students (masters, PHDs and Postdoc) in laser and optical material science, and cryogenics.

In The Refrigerator and the Universe, Martin and Inge Goldstein explain the laws of thermodynamics for science buffs and neophytes alike. They begin with a lively presentation of the historical development of thermodynamics. The authors then show how the laws follow from the atomic theory of matter and give examples of their applicability to such diverse phenomena as the radiation of light from hot bodies, the formation of diamonds from graphite, how the blood carries oxygen, and the history of the earth. The laws of energy, the Goldsteins conclude, have something to say about everything, even if they do not tell us everything about anything.

In Thermal Physics: Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics for Scientists and Engineers, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics are stated precisely as postulates and subsequently connected to historical context and developed mathematically.

In this classic of modern science, the Nobel Laureate presents a clear treatment of systems, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, entropy, thermodynamic potentials, and much more. Calculus required.