Transport Phenomena by Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot

Transport Phenomenon by Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot is one of the most useful chemical engineering textbook ever written. For nearly five decades now, many chemical engineers have lived by what they learned first through this book. The revised edition makes the book current, though 1960 edition is great introduction to the mass, heat and energy and/or momentum transfer problems.

The basis idea of the book is simple: list the equations useful for a system of problems, say in mass transfer; provide set of assumptions used to arrive at those; suggest possible solutions to the differential equations for practical industry conditions; use correlations derived by researchers where real time data is unavailable and lastly, learn how to adapt solutions for different set of conditions. The book attempts to make problem solving into a set of instructions to be followed, and by sticking to the fundamental assumptions and equations allows one to attack a range of problems relevant to fields as diverse as diffusion transport, biochemical processes, condensation problems for atmospheric physics, chemical kinetics, heat conduction, petroleum extraction and flow of fluids relevant to many processing industries.

We often hailed it as the Bible of Chemical Engineering. Every now and then, (nearly a decade after we first read it) I still hear people say: this problem, or something like it, was in BSL, (the acronym awarded to the book after its authors). Be it Transport texts by Deen or Middleman typically used for graduate school courses, or Incompressible Flow by Patton, the recourse to understanding problems first hand through BSL is always rewarding.

The book comes with a number of solved and unsolved problems. There is no short-cut to becoming a good chemical engineer, except by mastering the art and science of attacking problems. By going through the book meticulously right in your first course, (for in most cases, this is the first chemical engineering text encountered), you can ensure that you will do well in your whole education as chemical engineer.

Recommended reference for all chemical engineers.

Snow Crystals by WA Bentley

A classic example of meticulous effort;
a beautiful collection

Snow Crystals by Bentley represents the exhilarating beauty and complexity of snowflakes in photographs taken with painstaking effort and enterprise. The book has a very useful introduction, though most of it is devoted to the diverse patterns exhibited by snowflakes. The quest to understand why snowflakes have their delightful shape and symmetry has intrigued the scientists, poets and philosophers for centuries. For example, in sixteenth century, Kepler's essay (On six-cornered snowflake) presents a very illuminating (and perhaps first scientific) account of his thought process on the physics of why snowflake is formed. He discussed several key ideas relevant to packing problems, and on their shapes, and the book by Bentley surely dazzles in being able to present a diverse range of possibilities realized by nature. Highly recommended to science enthusiasts, artists, photographers and atmospheric physicists

Soft and Fragile Matter non-equilibrium dynamics, metastability and flow, ed. by M. E. Cates and M. R. Evans

Soft and Fragile Matter is a great compilation of essays, put together by editors Cates and Evans, into a book that is useful for every serious student of soft matter physics. The bibliography at the end of each chapter outlines essential reading for the corresponding branch of soft matter, and the text on each chapter provides a basic and yet erudite discussion on some of the essential features of colloids, polymers, surfactants, granular matter and glasses. Surprisingly the book does not include a chapter on liquid crystals.

A summary of what these essays contain:

Poon opens the book with "A day in the life of a hard-sphere suspension" outlining concepts of statistical mechanics and "dynamics, metastability and flow" required to appreciate their behavior.

David Pine introduces static and dynamic light scattering as well as basic rheology in context of behavior of glass forming gels and worm like miscelles as examples.

Alexei Khokhlov's chapter on polymer physics starts by discussing models for describing chain dimensions, follows up with swelling and collapse of polymer chains in solvents, and then discusses statics of polyelectrolytes and block polymers. Khokhlov is author of Statistical Physics of Macromolecules and Gaint Molecules: both of which are highly recommended texts for polymer physicists.

McLeish starts by explaining what rheology is, and how fluids and solids respond to stress. Then he talks about the theoretical aspects of Rouse model and reptation, and discusses experimental rheology of both linear and branched polymers.

Daan Frenkel's chapter on introduction to colloidal systems is a thirty piece masterpiece that presents most of the important concepts of colloidal phenomenon. The chapter starts by discussing why particles are brownian, talks about forces between particles and then talks about computer simulations of colloids. Phase behavior, metastability and crystallization as well as hydrodynamics of colloids are introduced to the reader.

Kurt Kremer summarizes the simulation strategies relevant to soft matter, presenting a brief on Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics. His book on the topic is must have, must read for simulators in the field.

Roux delves into the intricate phases and patterns formed by surfactants , both under static and dynamic conditions. Bray continues the discussion by providing insight into the coarsening dynamics, giving us a glimpse of mechanism and kinetics of transformation of one phase into another (disorder to order, and spinodal decomposition). Mukamel then tackles the phase behavior in nonequilibrium systems, an area which will see a lot of theoretical and experimental investigation in future.Symmetry breaking and collective phenomenon are becoming most investigated fields of study, and the mathematics involved is basis for understanding pattern formation and behavior across disciplines as diverse as population ecology, astronomy and oscillatory chemical reactions.

Kob takes us into the metastable, amorphous realm of supercooled liquids and glasses. He discusses strong and fragile glasses, Mode Coupling Theory as well as relaxation in supercooled systems. Bouchaud takes this discussion further by talking about aging in glassy systems.

Lekkerkerker takes off from where Frenkel left and talks about colloids in another very insightful chapter, where both hard sphere crystallization and impact of mixing on phase behavior of colloids blended with each other or polymers is discussed. Paul Chaikin discusses hydrodynamics and thermodynamics of hard spheres presenting important concepts regarding sedimentation and packing problem in solid spheres. His book with Lubensky is an erudite and mathematically intensive treatise on soft condensed matter.

Lastly, Nagel and Cates discuss the physics of granular materials, one of the least understood realm of soft matter. While Nagel describes experiments with little perturbation aimed at looking at statics of these materials, Cates summarizes the understanding of jamming and stress transmission in granular media.

With such richness and complexity of topics, this book deserves to be on the bookshelf of every soft matter enthusiast.

The Self-made Tapestry by Philip Ball

In the Self-made Tapestry, Philip Ball draws our attention to pattern formation in nature, outlines the beauty inherent in them, asks as why they form, and what other patterns are similar to them, and then provides a taste of how the physicists and mathematicians comprehend them and explain their form and function.

The science is present as both a quest for beauty and truth. The methods - experimentation and computation- are expounded, explained. Basic ideas, based on surface tension, viscosity, friction, forces, optics, chaos theory, and self-organized criticality are introduced and used in talking about as complex patterns as exist in turbulent streams or populations of predators and preys.

There are snapshots of history of a problem, tit-bits about the scientists who solved them and illustrations and examples of how one solution serves to solve different problems. Be it the assembly of bubbles or foam, sand-dunes or spiral patterns on sea-shells, Turing patterns in chemical medium or oscillatory patterns in Belousovy-Zhabotinsky reaction, the spiral waves in human heart or spots on leopard, the shape of rivers or mountains, colonies of bacteria or human cities, or convection patterns in oil heated in pan or corresponding ones in Earth mantle, the book explores a series of interesting, informative and educational patterns, throwing light on their existence and extent of our scientific understanding.

Philip Ball does a great job, given the diverse nature of physical concepts blended into this very delightful read, and the ease at which he allows the reader to appreciate experimental and theoretical research that have begun to emerge in the field of non-linear dynamics and chaos. The bibliography at the end lists a good many books and papers that are considered definitive reading in the field. A few characters are credited, though many more stars remain unexplored in this rich and intricate sky of non-linear physics. Given the intent and extent of the book, I will recommend it to everyone with interest in understanding why the world around us is full of shapes, patterns, forms, fractals and picturesque expression of color and figures.