Statistical Mechanics with Applications to Physics and Chemistry

Abstract

THE younger generation is not infrequently re-L proached with lack of respect for its scientific fathers. The complaint is probably unfounded, but, even if it were a just one, the younger chemists at least might plead that they had in some ways been set a bad example. The atomic theory is the keystone of chemistry: two generations ago the mechanics of atoms and molecules was worked out with the very minimum of assumptions which increasing knowledge might invalidate, but the results of this great achievement were more or less ignored for a generation. Only now are the kinetic theory and statistical methods coming into their own; and yet this branch of knowledge is a peculiarly important one. Nearly everyone, with or without particular philosophical reservations which his attitude towards the theory of knowledge may dictate, believes in the existence of molecules which move and in some way exert influences upon one another. Moreover, even idealists will admit that within the narrow confines of scientific realism a certain coherence may be achieved by introducing a quantity called energy. Statistical mechanics, which provides a means of determining such important matters as the distribution of energy among molecules, and its rate of transfer, without intimate knowledge of the nature of molecular interactions, is a magnificent compromise between the rather cold agnosticism of thermodynamics and that kind of more detailed theory which at present would be premature and doomed to failure.

Statistical Mechanics with Applications to Physics and Chemistry.

By Prof. Richard C. Tolman. (American Chemical Society Monograph Series.) Pp. 334. (New York: The Chemical Catalog Co., Inc., 1927.) 7 dollars.