This fascinating book, penned by Luc Tartar of America s Carnegie Mellon University, starts from the premise that equations of state are not always effective in continuum mechanics. Tartar relies on H-measures, a tool created for homogenization, to explain some of the weaknesses in the theory. These include looking at the subject from the point of view of quantum mechanics. Here, there are no "particles," so the Boltzmann equation and the second principle, can t apply."

Homogenization is not about periodicity, or Gamma-convergence, but about understanding which effective equations to use at macroscopic level, knowing which partial differential equations govern mesoscopic levels, without using probabilities (which destroy physical reality); instead, one uses various topologies of weak type, the G-convergence of Sergio Spagnolo, the H-convergence of Francois Murat and the author, and some responsible for the appearance of nonlocal effects, which many theories in continuum mechanics or physics guessed wrongly.

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