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Introduction
· Solids are one of the condensed phases
of matter. There are two approaches to understanding their condensation:
Thermodynamic and
Atomic.
· Thermodynamics
is not concerned with the microstructure of the system
being discussed. Thermodynamic parameters such as pressure, p, specific volume,
v, and temperature, T, are assigned to describe the system.
· The
atomic description is concerned with the microstructure of the
system, in particular with the interaction between pairs of atoms through an
interatomic potential
· The thermodynamic description can
be regarded as providing a macroscopic description of the system, whilst the
atomic description involves the microscopic length scale.
· The two descriptions must provide equivalent
results in the domain in which they are both valid. |
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