PHYS 242 Lecture 18: PHYS242_Lecture_18
13 May 2017
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2. 1. 1 atoms and the statistical approach to physical phenomena. Democritus who lived around 500 b. c. was the first of whom we know to have asked the question what would happen if one divided a piece of matter in half and again in half, and again, and again . He advocated the idea that this should not be possible infinitely often but one would end with a smallest possible quantity of matter that would be indivisible, atomos in greek. Aristotle who was very influential at the time dismissed this idea as worthless and so it disappeared for about 2000 years. In modern times it reappears in the 17th century and found first substantial support through robert boyle"s discovery that the product of pressure (cid:1842) and volume (cid:1848) of a gas is constant if the temperature (cid:1846) is constant. Newton explained in his principa why this should be the case if one assumes that gas consisted of tiny hard particles.
