This book is a brief and accessible popular science text intended for a broad audience and of particular interest also to science students and specialists. Using a minimum of mathematics, a number of qualitative and quantitative examples, and clear illustrations, the author explains the science of thermodynamics in its full historical context, focusing on the concepts of energy and its availability and transformation in thermodynamic processes. His ultimate aim is to gain a deep understanding of the second law—the increase of entropy—and its rather disheartening message of a universe descending inexorably into chaos and disorder. It also examines the connection between the second law and why things go wrong in our daily lives.  Readers will enhance their science literacy and feel more at home on the science side of author C. P. Snow's celebrated two-culture, science-humanities divide, and hopefully will feel more at home in the universe knowing that the disorder we deal with in our daily lives is not anyone's fault but Nature's.  

“There is no substitute for the happiness which colours give me.� After a long break, Heinz Mack has been focusing intensively on painting again for over thirty years. A cross-section of his "Chromatische Konstellationen" from 1991 until the present day shows how he translates the greatest possible purity of colour, light and immateriality into a broad spectrum of colour sequences and structures. Texts by Heinz Mack and Robert Fleck illuminate the essence of these colour worlds. Colour as light and light as colour – this represents, as it were, the nucleus of Mack’s painting. Within this premise he offers us a wide variety: chapters on, for example, the primacy of colour, atmosphere and nature, space, movement and geometric forms show the fascinating bandwidth of his work. The volume closes with an unusual undertaking: in a personal juxtaposition with works from art history from Duccio to Barnett Newman, the artist grants us an insight into his collective pictorial memory.

Heinz Mack (*1931) has been working as a sculptor and painter for more than sixty years. From the ZERO period in around 1960 to the present day he has created a wide-ranging work whose essential aspects, such as the significance of light, structure and colour are portrayed with often surprising perspectives. The authors accompany Mack in his constant search for a new concept of art, thereby discovering little-known connections to Minimal Art, Land Art, Yves Klein and Constantin Brancusi. The journey through Mack's rich oeuvre culminates finally in his passionate plea for the "idea of beauty in the 21st century". Heinz Mack is an artist who has left his mark on our times. He has made a pioneering contribution to the question of a new concept of art, which has been of fundamental importance since the post-war period. This volume offers for the first time a monograph with an overview of Mack's philosophy of art as well as his multi-faceted oeuvre: from ZERO and the legendary Sahara Project to light art and his most recent paintings.

Unsere Untersuchungen haben gezeigt, dass sich die bekannten Usability Tests durchaus zur Evaluierung von Multitouch-Systemen eignen. Sie m ssen allerdings an die Eigenheiten und Besonderheiten der Technologie angepasst werden. Wir untersuchten und optimierten die folgenden drei Usability-Methoden: Expertenevaluation Usability Experten, die Multitouch-Systeme evaluieren, m ssen mit der Technologie vertraut sein und deren spezielle Eingeschaften kennen. Sie m ssen sich bewusst sein, dass z.B. Aspekte wie Hardwareergonomie und Einsatzort gro en Einfluss auf die Usability eines Multitouch-Systems haben. Das zu untersuchende System muss von ihnen mit spezifischen Kriterien betrachtet und bewertet werden, wozu entsprechendes Fachwissen vorhanden sein muss. Dazu k nnen die von uns verfassten Guidelines als Grundlage dienen. Wir bieten weiterhin einen auf den Grunds tzen der Dialoggestaltung basierenden und um multitouch-spezifische Faktoren erweiterten Evaluierungsbogen an. Paper Prototype Die betragung von Gesten auf einen Paper Prototype f llt vielen Testpersonen sehr schwer. Er kann also nicht eingesetzt werden, um gezielt Erkenntnisse in diesem Bereich zu erlangen. Weiterhin lassen sich f r Multiuser-Anwendungen Tests mit mehreren Nutzern nur in begrenztem Rahmen durchf hren. Der Paper Prototype ist nicht flexibel genug, um von mehreren Probanden gleichzeitig bedient zu werden. Weiterhin k nnen Aussagen ber die Hardwareergonomie eines Produkts nur dann getroffen werden, wenn der u ere Aufbau dem finalen Produkt weitestgehend entspricht. Ist man sich dieser Aspekte bewusst, kann der Paper Prototype jedoch bereits zu einem sehr fr hen Stadium der Entwicklung R ckschl sse zur Informationsarchitektur und Hardwareergonomie eines Produkts erm glichen. Classic Usability Test Beim Classic Usability Test sollte in jedem Fall eine Nachbesprechung mit den Testpersonen durchgef hrt werden. Diese Nachbesprechung kann erg nzend zum eigentlichen Test wichtige Erkenntnisse