Abstract
AMONG the properties of liquids the viscosity is probably the one the investigation of which has suffered most from lack of any accepted theory, however crude and approximate, to guide it. A great body of more or less careful observations exist, but it has furnished remarkably little information as to the nature of the liquid state. The new technique of X-rays, the Raman effect, and the depolarisation of light may do much to elucidate the structure of liquids, but the older and grosser property of viscosity must be at least as pertinent. Recently, a letter of mine published in NATURE of Mar. 1 upon the subject of liquid viscosity called forth a number of letters, and seemed to make it advisable to say a little more of a theory which, little elaborated as it is, offers a picture which may prove helpful. The conception of a transitory and fluctuating ‘crystallisation’ of a liquid seems to fit in with other observations. I am far from being satisfied with the theory as it stands: my hopes go no further than that the facts cited in my present letter may suggest to some that there is a germ of truth in the point of view put forward. At any rate, I intend to make some measurements myself of the temperature coefficient of liquid viscosity, in the hope that they may throw some light on the old problem as to the force exerted on a single molecule by the molecules in its immediate neighbourhood, within the Lorentz sphere.
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FLEMING, A. The Viscosity of Liquids. Nature 125, 580 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125580a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125580a0