Physical Chemistry in the Service of the Sciences

Abstract

THIS handsome volume is based on a course of nine lectures delivered in 1902 at Chicago, where Prof, van 't Hoff was the guest of the university; it deals with the extension of Avogadro's law to solutions, and the thermodynamical principle of the conservation of energy; the thermochemical and electrical methods of determining what chemical changes are able to do work, and the theory of ionisation; the application of the phase-rule in relation to the extraction of pure salts from the Stassfurt deposits, and to the metallurgy of iron and steel; osmotic pressure in its physiological applications, and the catalytic action of enzymes; and the nature of the salts deposited by the evaporation of sea-water, and the reasons for their formation. The lecturer has thus, by carefully chosen examples, illustrated the bearing of modern physical chemistry on manufacture, on physiology, and on geology.

Physical Chemistry in the Service of the Sciences.

By J. H. van 't Hoff Prof. Alexander Smith. Pp. xviii + 126. (The University of Chicago Press, 1903.) Price 1.50 dollars.