Below, Prof. Gian Paolo Beretta describes various aspects of how he taught 2.43 Advanced Thermodynamics in the spring of 2024.
OCW: What inspired you to create this course for MIT OpenCourseWare?
Gian Paolo Beretta: In 2024, as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of thermodynamics as a formal field of study, I felt compelled to honor the subject with a comprehensive resource that serves as both a tribute and a practical aid. This course was designed to benefit a broad audience, from first-time teachers to students across engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. I like to think of this course as my birthday gift to the discipline—a celebration of thermodynamics for everyone who loves the subject, from teachers and students to curious enthusiasts around the world. Having recently entered a new chapter in my career, I also consider this course a retirement gift to the field—a final offering I hope will resonate with both current and future generations. It is, in many ways, a summation of 45 years of teaching thermodynamics to undergraduates, graduates, and doctoral students at MIT, the University of Brescia, and Politecnico Milano.
OCW: What role has teaching thermodynamics played in your scientific career?
Gian Paolo Beretta: Thermodynamics holds deep personal significance for me, largely shaped by the rigorous foundations passed down by my mentors—Elias Gyftopoulos, George Hatsopoulos, and James Keck—which I have strived to develop and share with students over the decades. This course is my way of formalizing these insights into a coherent, freely accessible curriculum. It blends the traditional rigor of the Keenan school of thermodynamics—already well established in the book I coauthored with Gyftopoulos in 1991—with a lighter yet equally rigorous presentation of foundational concepts. This approach includes modern insights related to energy and climate engineering, along with a novel take on currently fashionable concepts like small-system thermodynamics.
OCW: What makes this course unique among thermodynamics courses?
Gian Paolo Beretta: This course distills a broad range of thermodynamics topics into a concise, logically interconnected framework. Spanning 25 lectures (40 hours of content, or 27 hours at a suggested viewing speed of 1.5x), it offers an organized progression from foundational principles to advanced equilibrium and non-equilibrium modeling. In addition to video lectures, the course includes an extensive set of 650 detailed slides, available for download as a cohesive PDF. The course also features extensive navigation tools to enhance usability. The abstracts of lecture and slide contents provide hyperlinks directly to each slide and the corresponding YouTube timestamp, and an analytical index with 880 entries and 1,300 hyperlinks points users to specific slides and the moments in the videos where I begin discussing those slides. This structure, akin to an online textbook, enables in-depth study, making it a highly accessible and flexible resource.
OCW: What challenges does the course address for students and educators?
Gian Paolo Beretta: Teaching thermodynamics to a diverse audience can be challenging due to the subject’s complexity and breadth. This course was crafted to address that challenge by presenting material in a logically consistent manner, starting from core definitions and moving seamlessly through more advanced topics. For first-time instructors of thermodynamics, I hope this course will serve as both an introductory roadmap and a reliable reference, offering a coherent pedagogical approach based on decades of refined teaching methods.
OCW: Who might find this course most beneficial?
Gian Paolo Beretta: I designed this course with a wide range of learners in mind. Instructors who are new to thermodynamics or seeking fresh ways to teach it may find this course especially helpful. Beyond instructors, I hope students from diverse fields—engineering, physics, chemistry, and even life sciences—will find it a valuable introduction to thermodynamics. Its comprehensive slide collection and indexed structure make it ideal for those seeking a rigorous yet accessible approach to both foundational and advanced thermodynamics.
OCW: How did you approach homework and exams to support student learning in this course?
Gian Paolo Beretta: Since many of the students who attended this graduate course are likely to pursue academic careers, I adopted an innovative evaluation method that emphasizes clear, verbal articulation of foundational thermodynamic concepts. My goal was to cultivate students’ ability to explain complex topics concisely but precisely, especially regarding modeling assumptions and the logical structure of nonequilibrium and irreversible processes. For the homework, each student created brief videos (maximum 5 minutes) where they explained a topic using an assigned selection of slides from class, focusing on delivering precise oral explanations without memorizing extensive formulas. I was truly impressed by the clarity and depth many students demonstrated in their videos. The final exam followed a similar approach: it was an in-person, oral exam that required students to explain specific slides from the course. Several students even mentioned that they found this format valuable practice for their upcoming PhD oral qualifiers, which was an added benefit of this method.
OCW: What future developments do you envision for this course?
Gian Paolo Beretta: I am currently developing a monograph to serve as a formalized companion to this course, capturing its unique structure and in-depth approach. This text will further clarify and expand upon the course material, ensuring its educational value endures and that the rigorous, interconnected approach to thermodynamics continues to support new generations of learners.
