Landmark Papers 2: Structure Topology

von Frank C. Hawthorne

308 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

The question of what is matter has fascinated the humanrace for thousands of years, and continues to fascinate ustoday: what is it made of, and how does it behave? Early inour history, the character of natural materials was of criticalimportance to us, and it is no accident that we date theprehistory of humanity by the materials with which ourpredecessors made their tools. Tools are one of the moreenduring creations of our prehistoric ancestors, and are ofparticular historical significance as they document theincreasing technological sophistication of the human race.From the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age,there was an increasing awareness of the diversity ofnatural materials, how they could be used, and eventually,how they could be processed in order to provide even moretechnologically effective materials for our use. Thisincreasing reliance on rocks and minerals required thatmore and more people be conversant with these materialsand their properties. The atomistic theory of the Greeks was a solely philosophicalconstruct, and further development had to await a more sophisticatedapproach to Science. The first steps in this directionwere taken by who else but Isaac Newton (1643-1727 AD).Although his ideas on action at a distance initially referred toplanets, he also considered them as applying to atoms, and concludedfrom physical evidence involving surface tension andviscosity that there must be strong attractions between atoms.In what must be considered as insight of legendary proportions,Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711-1787), a Jesuit mathematicianfrom Croatia, proposed that at very short distances, atomsrepulse each other, the repulsion increasing indefinitely as theparticles become closer together, whereas at longer distancesapart, atoms oscillate between attraction and repulsion.Frank Hawthorne uses the republication of this set of landmarkpapers as a vehicle to focus on the development of key issuesconcerning structural connectivity in inorganic solids, of whichminerals are a key component, and to look at where we aretoday in our understanding of crystal structure.

• Reihe: Landmark Papers
• Themen: Geowissenschaften, Geographie, Umwelt, Planung Geowissenschaften Geologie und die Lithosphäre Petrologie (Gesteinskunde), Petrografie und Mineralogie
• ISBN: 9780903056236
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 01.12.2006
• Größe: 297 x 210 mm
• Verlag: Mineralogical Society
• Herausgegeben von: Bernard J. Wood