Abstract
ONE necessary stage in the learning of physical chemistry is that in which the crystalline state is represented as one of perfect order-one molecule to each lattice point, only disturbed by the thermal motion, a quivering of the structure as a whole-and the liquid and gaseous states as entirely disorderly, the equation of van der Waals being used to demonstrate that a disorderly assembly of molecules can undergo a two-phase condensation. This was the stage which the education of physical chemists as a whole had reached a few years ago ; but now the gradual accumulation of new knowledge about the detailed molecular structure of condensed matter is forcing us to learn lessons of which such pioneers as Boltzmann and Mie were in principle aware by the turn of the century. They had perceived already, in particular from specific heats and densities, that molecules in a liquid must undergo very much the same motions as in the solid state. Now we are learning that there may be a great deal of order in the liquid and a great deal of disorder in the crystalline state, and it is even by no means so obvious as once it seemed that liquid and crystalline solid must form two sharply distinct phases.
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FRANK, F. Transition Stages between Order and Disorder in Condensed Phases. Nature 142, 1166–1168 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/1421166a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1421166a0