Energetics Ostwald

During the early years of physieal ehemistry, Ostwald did not believe in the existence of atoms... and yet he was somehow ineluded in the wild army of ionists. He was resolute in his scepticism and in the 1890s he sustained an obscure theory of energetics to take the place of the atomic hypothesis. How ions could be formed in a solution containing no atoms was not altogether clear. Finally, in 1905, when Einstein had shown in rigorous detail how the Brownian motion studied by Perrin could be interpreted in terms of the collision of dust motes with moving molecules (Chapter 3, Section 3.1.1), Ostwald relented and publicly embraced the existence of atoms. 

A known effect contributing to an increased saturation solubility is the formation of highly energetic surfaces by the milling process. The breaking of crystals lead to the exposure of inner parts of the crystal to the outer dispersion medium, implying that energetically less favorable surfaces are now in contact with water. The Ostwald-Freundlich equation also describes saturation solubility as a function of the tnterfacial tension between solid—liquid interphase. An increase in the interfacial tension y leads to an increase in the saturation solubility. 

F. Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932), Professor at the Umiversity of Leipzig, Germany (1887-1906). Organized physical chemistry as a major discipline of science, Nobel Prize in 1909 (work on equilibria and reaction rates). The rule states that initial, small crystals disappear in time and energetically favorable, large ones appear [Z Phys Chem 22 289 (1897)]. 

The so-called factors of energy , intensity and capacity, were introduced by Rankine and J. Thomson. Rankine also introduced the name energetics , popularised by Ostwald (see p. 597). 

In general, interfacial energy is a material-specific property influenced by temperature and pressure. Its significance results from the fact that its value rises with any increase in the interfacial area. From an energetic point of view it is, therefore, favourable when, e.g., the droplets of a colloidal emulsion coalesce and, thus, reduce the interfacial area, or when the coarse particles of a colloidal phase grow at the expense of the fine particles (Ostwald ripening). 

Work in the group centered around thermodynamics (Ostwald s energetics ), the colligative properties of gases and liquids and exiDerimental evidence for Arrhenius s new h>TX)thesis. 

Like every form and expression of appropriation, opinions differed among the members of the chemistry community as to the use of mathematics. The chemist Edward Frankland predicted that the future of chemistry was to lay in its alliance with mathematics. The chemist Paul Schiitzenberger believed that mathematics would become an instrument as useful to the chemist as the balance (Coulson 1974, 10). Van t Hoff could not have been more mathematical in his systematic study of chemical thermodynamics. Ostwald s extensive use of mathematics would have been much more influential had it not been undermined by his insistence on energetics. Lewis was not less skilled in mathematics. Even Joseph Larmor and Joseph John Thomson before him tried to propose a mathematical framework for dealing with chemical problems. But there was also strong resistance against such programs. 

Deltete, 2007] R. J. Deltete. Wilhelm Ostwald s energetics, Foundations of Chemistry, 9 3-56,... 

General discussions of energetics, and more detailed ones of both Helm and Ostwald, may be found in my essays listed in the References. 

Unlike Helm, Ostwald was an energetic realist. His official position, even if not the one he always followed, is perhaps best described by what I have elsewhere called the Composition Thesis [1995b, 139-140 2008, 194-200]. On this view material objects (or physical-chemical systems ) are nothing more than energy complexes, spatially co-present and coupled clusters of energy and Ostwald found it, at least implicitly, in Gibbs ... 

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