The determination of molecular forces from the viscosity of a gas

Abstract

The investigations of the kinetic theory of gases fall into two groups, those dealing with the deviations from Boyle's law as given by the second virial coefficient of the equation of state, and those dealing with the transport phenomena of viscosity, diffusion, and conduction of heat. In both cases the investigations are in so complete a form that there only remains the problem of working out the application of the results to particular models intended to represent the mutual action of the molecules. In the case of the equation of state it has been shown by Lennard-Jones that it is possible to carry out the necessary numerical calculations for the molecular model in which the repulsive force between two molecules is of the form λ r - n , where r is the distance between any two molecules, and the attractive force is of the form μ r - m . The results of this work have been found suitable for particular cases, and the corresponding force constants λ and μ have been determined.