Abstract
IT is remarkable how little we know with any certainty -L about the chemical properties of solids, although the idea of a solid is so fundamental. At the present time we always begin the study of chemistry with the gases on account of the simplicity of their mathematical treatment, but it must be remembered that this simplicity is the result of long study and of many discoveries. To the unscientific mind the solid is simpler, because more tangible. When men have tried to understand gases, they have expressed themselves in terms of solids. The atom, however attenuated it may have become in recent years, was in the first instance essentially a solid sphere, and the elasticity of gases has been explained in terms of the collision of elastic solid particles in motion.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
DESCH, C. The Chemistry of Solids1. Nature 116, 610–613 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116610a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116610a0
This article is cited by
-
Techno-economic analysis of ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass–a comparison of fermentation, thermo catalytic, and chemocatalytic technologies
Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering (2021)