Abstract
IN a recent paper1, M. Born has given a new theory of the melting of crystals which is in good agreement with the experimental facts. The stability conditions of a lattice at a certain temperature and a certain uniform pressure for arbitrary small homogeneous deformations are derived, and it is stated that melting will take place when, on raising the temperature, at least one of these conditions is violated. In another paper by Prof. Born and myself to be published shortly, an attempt is made to calculate the tensile strength of a crystal at zero temperature. Here again, the stability conditions of the lattice, stressed in the direction of one of the axes, against any small homogeneous deformation, are derived, and the crystal is supposed to break if one of these conditions is violated. Thus a close relation between the two phenomena of melting and breaking seems to exist, melting being nothing else than a breaking due to the action of the heat movement of the atoms; or putting it the other way round, breaking is nothing else than melting enforced by the action of the stress. Unfortunately, the theory mentioned above, like other former theories, gives results not in agreement with experiment: the tensile strength as well as the critical deformations calculated from this theory with plausible assumptions are about a hundred times larger than the real values given by experiment.
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Born, M., J. Chem. Phys., 7, 591 (1939).
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FÜRTH, R. Relation between Breaking and Melting. Nature 145, 741 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145741a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145741a0
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