hours a week in lecture and recitation.
You should be spending a minimum of eight hours a week reviewing lecture
material, reading books on reserve, doing homework, and studying for exams.
My advice to you is that you spend at least 3 of those 8 hours
reviewing lecture material each week--and that you set aside regular time
to study.
Everything that will appear on the exams or the homeworks will be covered in the lectures and lecture notes. However, you will want to supplement the lecture notes with reading from the text or other sources on thermodynamics.
I recommend that you take your own lecture notes on the printed versions of the abridged notes that are available on http://pruffle.mit.edu/3.00 (perhaps with extra paper) and then recopy the notes neatly at a time shortly after the lecture. You could recopy on freshly printed versions of my notes or rewrite it them completely yourself. That way, you are constantly reviewing the important points and will see how everything fits together; I believe you will be surprised at how effective a studying strategy that this is. In fact, I believe it so strongly that I will make the following bargain. Anyone who shows me that they are carefully re-copying the notes will receive--as a reward--half the difference between their score on one of the midterms and the top score for the class for that midterm. To receive this bonus, you must show me or Dr. Raghavan your carefully recopied notes at least one day before each exam (i.e., three times during the semester). To determine whether you have been sufficiently assiduous to receive this bonus, Dr. Raghavan or I will judge whether you have spent at least one hour per lecture re-copying the notes.