December 2010
Intermediate to advanced
710 pages
23h 35m
English
6 Van der Waals Forces
The various types of physical forces described so far are fairly easy to understand, since they arise from straightforward electrostatic interactions involving charged or dipolar molecules. But there is a another type of force that like the gravitational force—acts between all atoms and molecules, even totally neutral ones such as helium, carbon dioxide, and hydrocarbons. These forces have been variously known as dispersion forces, London forces, charge-fluctuation forces, electrodynamic forces, and induced-dipole-induced-dipole forces. We shall refer to them as dispersion forces, since it is by this name that they are most ...