Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! With the development of a variety of exciting new areas of research involving computational chemistry, nano- and smart materials, and applications of the recently discovered graphene, there can be no doubt that physical chemistry is a vitally important field. It is also perceived as the most daunting branch of chemistry, being necessarily grounded in physics and mathematics and drawing as it does on quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and statistical thermodynamics.
With his typical clarity and hardly a formula in sight, Peter Atkins' Very Short Introduction explores the contributions physical chemistry has made to all branches of chemistry. Providing insight into its central concepts Atkins reveals the cultural contributions physical chemistry has made to our understanding of the natural world. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field.
Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Eric R. Scerri also incorporates new material on recent advances in our understanding of the origin of the elements, as well as developments concerning group three of the periodic table.
These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. Author : Peter W. Author : Frank A. Known as the discoverer of electro-magnetic induction, the principle behind the electric generator and transformer, he has frequently been portrayed as the 'father' of electrical engineering from whence much of his popular fame derives.
This Very Short Introduction dispels the myth that Faraday was an experimental genius working alone in his basement laboratory, making fundamental discoveries that were later applied by others. Instead, it portrays Faraday as a grand theorist of the physical world profoundly influencing later physicists such as Thomson Kelvin , Maxwell, and Einstein.
Frank A. James explores Faraday's life from his origins in eighteenth-century Westmorland and Yorkshire, his religious and scientific background, to the growth of his fame in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As well as introducing his scientific research, he also puts Faraday in the various institutional contexts in which he lived and worked, including the Royal Institution, the Royal Society, Trinity House, and other agencies of the state.
James therefore provides a commentary on the rapidly changing place of science in nineteenth-century society, especially in regards to its role in government and the growth of a professional scientific community. Over the course of his life he dabbled in drugs, politics, and the Paris SM scene, all whilst striving to understand the deep concepts of identity, knowledge, and power. From aesthetics to the penal system; from madness and civilisation to avant-garde literature, Foucault was happy to reject old models of thinking and replace them with versions that are still widely debated today.
A major influence on Queer Theory and gender studies he was openly gay and died of an AIDS-related illness in , he also wrote on architecture, history, law, medicine, literature, politics, and of course philosophy.
In this Very Short Introduction Gary Gutting presents a wide-ranging but non-systematic exploration of some highlights of Foucault's life and thought. Beginning with a brief biography to set the social and political stage, he then tackles Foucault's thoughts on literature, in particular the avant-garde scene; his philosophical and historical work; his treatment of knowledge and power in modern society; and his thoughts on sexuality. The interior of an atom is where much of the explanation of matter is to be found and it is here that a chemist is most indebted to physics.
Within this realm, within an atom, explanations necessarily draw on quantum mechanics, that perplexing description of the behaviour of the very small. That quantum mechanics is central to their description should not be taken to be a warning that the rest of this chapter will be incomprehensible! I shall distil from that theory only the qualitative essence of what we need. The ancient Greeks speculated that matter was composed of atoms. That was pure speculation unsupported by any experimental evidence and so cannot be regarded as the beginning of physical chemistry.
Dalton inferred the existence of atoms from his measurements but had no way of assessing their actual sizes. He had no notion that nearly two centuries later, in the late 20th century, scientists would at last be able to see them. For a physical chemist, an atom consists of a central, tiny, massive, positively charged nucleus surrounded by a cloud of much lighter, negatively charged electrons.
Chemists have little interest in the details of the structure of the nucleus itself and are content to think of it as a tightly bound collection of two types of fundamental particle, positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. The number of neutrons is approximately the same as the number of protons none for ordinary hydrogen, 2 for ordinary helium, and about for livermorium.
This number is slightly variable, and gives rise to the different isotopes of the element. As far as a physical chemist is concerned, a nucleus is a largely permanent structure with three important properties: it accounts for most of the mass of the atom, it is positively charged, and in many cases it spins on its axis at a constant rate.
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