Content area
Full Text
A FIRST COURSE IN ATMOSPHERIC THERMODYNAMICS Grant W. Petty, 2008, 337 pp., $48.00 ($36.00 when ordered directly from publisher), paperbound, Sundog Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9729033-2-5
Before being asked to review Grant Petty 's A First Course in Atmospheric Thermodynamics, I had already assigned it as a required text to students in my sophomore-level calculus-based course in atmospheric thermodynamics. It is the fourth text I have tried in eight years of teaching such a course. As I write this review, the fall semester is half over, and I can say without reservation that I highly recommend the text for use in an undergraduate meteorology curriculum.
A First Course in Atmospheric Thermodynamics squarely hits its target audience of undergraduate meteorology majors beginning their sequence of calculus-based meteorology courses. In the preface of the text, Petty acknowledges that the text is written to complement a course that is the first in which calculus and quantitative problem solving is being applied toward the atmosphere. An entire 23-page appendix is dedicated to problem solving, including detailed sections on dimensional consistency, basic differentiation and integration, symbolic notation, and numerical precision, as well a sample...