Briefly: many, many years ago... in a galaxy far, far away... whoops, sorry, wrong beginning. The Phlogiston Pages are the result of a (semi-) weekly meeting of a group of physics enthusiasts led by Dr. William Taylor. The meetings resulted from the natural questioning by Rick Simpson (grad student in Mathematics) of Dr. Taylor about the nature and essence of entropy. Rick Simpson and Dr. Taylor were later joined by Ricky J. Sethi (grad student in Physics/Business) and the three met every week or so to discuss entropy and to wrestle with some of the hairier aspects of Thermodynamics in general.

Roughly 6 months later, the group expanded when Shamim Ahmed (grad student in Physics) and Shant Muradian (grad student in Physics) joined the discussions. These informal meetings have resulted in many lively and enjoyable discussions... and even a little insight here and there.

The current emphasis of our weekly meetings is to embark upon a historical approach to understanding entropy and thermodynamics in general. We are currently using Entropy by Goldstein & Goldstein (no relation to Herbert Goldstein of classical mechanics fame) and An Introduction to Thermodynamics: The Kinetic Theory of Gases and Statistical Mechanics by Francis Weston Sears as our guides in this undertaking. The story so far follows...