On Being a Student of Thermodynamics: Trust Your Eyes; Use Your Imagination

I am a student of thermodynamics. Yes, I have been teaching the subject to baccalaureate and graduate students in petrology and materials science for about 25 years. But in every course, almost every lecture, I perceive something new: some new (to me) subtlety in the ideas that facilitates deeper appreciation and understanding of some of the experimental data generated In my research group and that fosters a profound admiration for the many scholars who brought forth these ideas In the nineteenth century and refined them in the twentieth. In this process, I have identified and shared with my fellow learners two pieces of advice that are particularly valuable in applying thermodynamics to the analysis of textures in rocks, which is so very often the center of our interest in thermodynamics: trust your eyes; use your imagination. Let me explain, or at least try ...