Abstract
PROF. CEOWTHER has performed a great service to elementary students in producing this new edition. It has been necessary to displace part of the account of earlier atomic theories to make room for sections on the important advances of the last few years, but the greater part of the classical groundwork has been left intact. The chapter on quanta is particularly valuable, and one cannot but admire the apt metaphors with which Prof. Crowther has enlivened his subject, even if at times his statements on controversial points are unduly dogmatic. One might have expected that more space would have been devoted to the artificial disintegration of atomic nuclei by a-particles, and that more illustrations of the cloud trails of ionising particles would have been inserted; we believe also that it remains to be proved that one of the disintegration products of the nitrogen atom is helium. Prof. Crowther's task, however, has been far from easy, and altogether the result of his labours is an adequate introduction to more advanced treatises of the type of Prof. Sommerfeld's “Atombau,” and to current physical literature.
Molecular Physics and the Electrical Theory of Matter.
Prof.
J. A.
Crowther
By. (Text-Books of Chemical Research and Engineering.) Fourth edition. Pp. viii + 202. (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1927.) 7s. 6d.
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Molecular Physics and the Electrical Theory of Matter . Nature 122, 93 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122093a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122093a0