Pioneering Ideas for the Physical and Chemical Sciences
Pioneering Ideas for the Physical and Chemical Sciences

Author: W. Fleischhacker

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1489902686

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This volume presents the contributions delivered at the "Josef-Loschmidt-Sympo sium," which took place in Vienna, June 25-27, 1995. The symposium was arranged to honor Josef Loschmidt one hundred years after his death (8 July 1895), to evaluate the sig nificance of his contributions to chemistry and physics from a modem point of view and to trace the development of scientific fields in which he had done pioneering work. Loschmidt is widely known for the first calculation of the size of molecules (1865/66), which also led to values for the number of molecules in unit gas volume and for the mass of molecules. With critical analyses of problems in statistical physics he made important contributions to the development of that field, "Loschmidt's paradoxon" continuing to be a point of departure for present day studies and discussions. For decades there was little awareness that Loschmidt was a pioneer in organic struc tural chemistry. Only in recent years has Loschmidt's first scientific publication "Chemis che Studien I", published in 1861, become more widely known and it is now recognized that with his ideas on the structure of organic molecules he was greatly ahead of the chemists of that time. The papers in these proceedings are arranged in three sections: l. Organic structural chemistry (Chapters 1-12). 2. Physics and physical chemistry (Chapters 13-26). 3. Loschmidt's biography, Loschmidt's world (Chapters 27-33).

Jožef Stefan: His Scientific Legacy on the 175th Anniversary of His Birth
Jožef Stefan: His Scientific Legacy on the 175th Anniversary of His Birth

Author: John C. Crepeau

Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers

Published: 2013-02-20

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1608054772

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Most scientists and engineers are familiar with the name Josef Stefan primarily from the Stefan-Boltzmann law, which relates the amount of energy transferred by radiation to the absolute temperature raised to the fourth power. Stefan determined this law from experimental data, and it was later theoretically verified by his former student, Ludwig Boltzmann. However, it is interesting to know that this is the same Stefan who lent his name to the solid-liquid phase change problem, and concepts related to molecular diffusion and convective motion driven by surface evaporation or ablation. Stefan counted among his students Sigmund Freud, who was so inspired by his physics instructor that he incorporated scientific methods into psychoanalysis. This invaluable book details not only Josef Stefan’s original contributions in these areas, but the current state-of-the-art of his pioneering work.

The Physical Tourist
The Physical Tourist

Author: John S. Rigden

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-05-29

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 3764389338

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Travelers differ.At one extreme are random travelers who see what they accidentally bump into.At the other extreme are the lock-step travelers who follow a banner (or a red umbrella) and look when and where a voice tells them to look. Between these extremes are the guide-book travelers who identify the whereabouts of those sites that interest them and they plan their sightseeing accordingly. If a traveler’s interests are captivated by the arts, guide books can be very helpful. For example, the table of contents of a current guide book for travelers going to G- many has sections on architecture, art, literature, music and cinema.The index gives page references for famous writers, musicians, and artists.Yet, while Germany was a dominate force in physical science during the 19th and into the 20th centuries and while the names and photos of prominent German physical scientists who worked in this period are sprinkled through the pages of textbooks, only one scientist is m- tioned by name:Albert Einstein is identified as the most famous citizen of Ulm.

Image and Reality
Image and Reality

Author: Alan J. Rocke

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-05-15

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0226723356

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Nineteenth-century chemists were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules that are beyond the direct reach of our bodily senses. In visualizing this microworld, these scientists were the first to move beyond high-level philosophical speculations regarding the unseen. In Image and Reality, Alan Rocke focuses on the community of organic chemists in Germany to provide the basis for a fuller understanding of the nature of scientific creativity. Arguing that visual mental images regularly assisted many of these scientists in thinking through old problems and new possibilities, Rocke uses a variety of sources, including private correspondence, diagrams and illustrations, scientific papers, and public statements, to investigate their ability to not only imagine the invisibly tiny atoms and molecules upon which they operated daily, but to build detailed and empirically based pictures of how all of the atoms in complicated molecules were interconnected. These portrayals of “chemical structures,” both as mental images and as paper tools, gradually became an accepted part of science during these years and are now regarded as one of the central defining features of chemistry. In telling this fascinating story in a manner accessible to the lay reader, Rocke also suggests that imagistic thinking is often at the heart of creative thinking in all fields. Image and Reality is the first book in the Synthesis series, a series in the history of chemistry, broadly construed, edited by Angela N. H. Creager, John E. Lesch, Stuart W. Leslie, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan Rocke, E.C. Spary, and Audra J. Wolfe, in partnership with the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Dynamics: Models and Kinetic Methods for Non-equilibrium Many Body Systems
Dynamics: Models and Kinetic Methods for Non-equilibrium Many Body Systems

Author: John Karkheck

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 940114365X

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Recent years have witnessed a resurgence in the kinetic approach to dynamic many-body problems. Modern kinetic theory offers a unifying theoretical framework within which a great variety of seemingly unrelated systems can be explored in a coherent way. Kinetic methods are currently being applied in such areas as the dynamics of colloidal suspensions, granular material flow, electron transport in mesoscopic systems, the calculation of Lyapunov exponents and other properties of classical many-body systems characterised by chaotic behaviour. The present work focuses on Brownian motion, dynamical systems, granular flows, and quantum kinetic theory.

How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life
How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life

Author: Jan Spitzer

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-02-09

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0262045575

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A reconceptualization of origins research that exploits a modern understanding of non-covalent molecular forces that stabilize living prokaryotic cells. Scientific research into the origins of life remains exploratory and speculative. Science has no definitive answer to the biggest questions--"What is life?" and "How did life begin on earth?" In this book, Jan Spitzer reconceptualizes origins research by exploiting a modern understanding of non-covalent molecular forces and covalent bond formation--a physicochemical approach propounded originally by Linus Pauling and Max Delbrück. Spitzer develops the Pauling-Delbrück premise as a physicochemical jigsaw puzzle that identifies key stages in life's emergence, from the formation of first oceans, tidal sediments, and proto-biofilms to progenotes, proto-cells and the first cellular organisms.

Recent Advances in Metrology and Fundamental Constants
Recent Advances in Metrology and Fundamental Constants

Author: T.J. Quinn

Publisher: IOS Press

Published: 2001-12-18

Total Pages: 836

ISBN-13: 1614990026

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The exchange between physics and metrology is always fascinating and exciting. Many are the open problems in physics that call for extremely precise standards, many are the advances in metrology made possible by a deep and assiduous study of the underlying physics. One has just to think of the enormous sophistication required in the measurements of some absolute quantities such as the Avogadro, the gas, or the gravitational constants. It is also worth noticing that not only the units of a metrological system are interrelated through the fundamental constants, but also the latter find their full significance when they are determined through the most exacting metrological experiments. Over the past decade many improvements took place and these are discussed in this book; from one side the old caesium SI second definition has found a new realisation, with the “fountain” approach, replacing the classical thermal atomic beam. The use of “cold” atom techniques, in which bunches of inert atoms are collected, slowed down, and cooled, has opened a number of new and unexpected avenues for metrology and fundamental constants; one of these possibilities being the atom interferometry. Another important “quantum jump” was the demonstration of the possibility of performing a direct frequency division in the visible, using ultra short femtosecond pulses. In addition, the possibility of “counting” electrons or photons gave a fundamental support to the development of single-electron capacitance standards and to new scenarios in the absolute calibration of photo-detectors.

Chemistry & Art
Chemistry & Art

Author: Alfred Bader

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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"The second volume of Alfred Bader's remarkable autobiography begins where Adventures of a Chemist Collector ended - with the boardroom coup in which Alfred was dismissed from the chemical company he had built up from the ground. He now turns his enormous energy to old master paintings, in which he has been interested from a young age and in which he now has the means to invest." "What follows is a series of notes and stories on the world of art seen through the eyes of Alfred Bader: particularly meaningful paintings or groups of paintings, descriptions of memorable auctions, mysteries and discoveries relating to the artworks in the Bader Collection. All this is infused with insights on friends, family, love, religion, charity, and, occasionally, chemistry."--BOOK JACKET.

The Biological Chemistry of the Elements
The Biological Chemistry of the Elements

Author: J. J. R. Frausto da Silva

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-08-16

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 9780198508489

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This text describes the functional role of the twenty inorganic elements essential to life in living organisms.

Time Reversibility, Computer Simulation, And Chaos
Time Reversibility, Computer Simulation, And Chaos

Author: William Graham Hoover

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 1999-11-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9814494283

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A small army of physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and engineers has joined forces to attack a classic problem, the “reversibility paradox”, with modern tools. This book describes their work from the perspective of computer simulation, emphasizing the author's approach to the problem of understanding the compatibility, and even inevitability, of the irreversible second law of thermodynamics with an underlying time-reversible mechanics. Computer simulation has made it possible to probe reversibility from a variety of directions and “chaos theory” or “nonlinear dynamics” has supplied a useful vocabulary and set of concepts, which allow a fuller explanation of irreversibility than that available to Boltzmann or to Green and Kubo and Onsager. Clear illustration of concepts is emphasized throughout, and reinforced with a glossary of technical terms from the specialized fields which have been combined here to focus on a common theme.The book begins with a discussion contrasting the idealized reversibility of basic physics and the pragmatic irreversibility of real life. Computer models, and simulation, are next discussed and illustrated. Simulations provide the means to assimilate concepts through worked-out examples. State-of-the-art analyses, from the point of view of dynamical systems, are applied to many-body examples from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics and to chaotic irreversible flows from finite-difference, finite-element, and particle-based continuum simulations. Two necessary concepts from dynamical-systems theory — fractals and Lyapunov instability — are fundamental to the approach.Undergraduate-level physics, calculus, and ordinary differential equations are sufficient background for a full appreciation of this book, which is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduates, and research workers. The generous assortment of examples worked out in the text will stimulate readers to explore the rich and fruitful field of study which links fundamental reversible laws of physics to the irreversibility surrounding us all.