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  1. Home
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  3. Cohesion
  • Cited by 55
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2009
Print publication year:
2002
Online ISBN:
9780511535420
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511535420
Subjects:
History of Science, Physical Chemistry, Chemistry, General Science
Information

Book description

Why does matter stick together? Why do gases condense to liquids, and liquids to solids? This book provides a detailed historical account of how some of the leading scientists of the past three centuries have tried to answer these questions. The topic of cohesion and the study of intermolecular forces has been an important component of physical science research for hundreds of years. This book is organised into four broad periods of advances in our understanding. The first three are associated with Newton, Laplace and van der Waals. The final section gives an account of the successful use in the twentieth century of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics to resolve most of the remaining problems. The book will be of primary interest to physical chemists and physicists, as well as historians of science interested in the historical origins of our modern day understanding of cohesion.

Reviews

‘… an intricate and intriguing saga … The book admirably fulfills its stated aim of serving historians of science and also physicists or physical chemists curious about the roots of modern approaches to intermolecular forces.’

Dudley Herschbach Source: Physics Today

‘The book strikingly illustrates the crooked ways of progress in science … presents an exhaustive treatment of a ubiquitous natural phenomenon that stubbornly resisted fundamental understanding until well into the twentieth century.’

Johanna Levelt Sengers Source: Isis

‘Rowlinson’s detailed and densely informative study is destined to be the history of cohesion for many years to come. … it will be of as much interest to historians of the physical sciences as to scientists with an inclination for the history of their field. … an excellently guided tour through the labyrinth of cohesion from Newton to quantum physics.’

Source: Ambix

'We rarely contemplate the forces holding everyday objects together. … However, J. S. Rowlinson's fascinating book reveals that the causes of cohesion have occupied many great scientific minds over the past three centuries.'

Michael Sutton Source: Chemistry in Britain

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