The foundations of mechanics and thermodynamics Available to Purchase

On October 21‐23, 1959, a Conference on the Foundations of Mechanics and Thermodynamics was held at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. The idea for this conference arose at a series of informal discussions at the National Bureau of Standards among workers in the fields of continuum mechanics and statistical mechanics. Although these subjects can both be classed as branches of mechanics, associated with each a vocabulary and mode of thinking have developed such that the relationship between these disciplines is only vaguely discernible. The conference was designed to shed a little light on this problem, in particular by exploring and comparing the foundations and premises at the heart of each.