Context
I chose this book to develop a quantitative understanding of energy systems, rather than relying on qualitative or oversimplified arguments about sustainability.
It is recommended on the Cambridge Engineering reading list and is well known for emphasising numbers, scales, and physical limits.
Key ideas so far
To be explored.
Connections
This book is relevant to any field of engineering that interacts with large-scale energy systems, including transport, power generation, and long-term infrastructure planning.
It also reinforces the importance of numerical reasoning and order-of-magnitude thinking.
Questions / things to revisit
- How energy densities and efficiencies compare across different systems
- Which simplifying assumptions are reasonable, and which break down in real-world applications