Avogadro and his constant University of Sussex（阿伏伽德罗常数苏塞克斯大学）.pdf

Avogadro and his Constant John Murrell An account is given of the historical development of Avogadro’s hypothesis, and of the principal methods of determining Avogadro’s constant which have been used over the past 200 years. These include the kinetic theory of gases, Brownian motion, measurement of the electron charge, black-body radiation, alpha particle emission, and X-ray measurements. Avogadro’s Constant Avogadro’s constant is the number of molecules in a mole, or the ratio of the molar mass to the molecular mass. Its great importance is that it provides a link between the properties of individual atoms or molecules and the properties of bulk matter. For example, it links the energies of individual atoms and molecules, which can be determined from spectroscopy, to the thermodynamic energies of bulk matter which are obtained from calorimetric experiments. Its most recent value is NA=647)x1023 mol-1 This is, for example, the number of water molecules in 18.0152g, roughly 18ml, of water (a mole of water). To appreciate the magnitude of this number note that if each water molecule was the size of a grain of sand (volume say 1mm3 ), then one mole of water would cover the UK with a layer a few kilometres thick. There are more water molecules in a cup of tea than there are stars in the universe (estimated to be 1022). Background History The idea that matter was composed of minute indivisible components (atoms), and was not capable of subdivision without limit, goes back to the Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus. In 1599 Shakespear wrote in As You Like It ‘ It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the proposition of a lover’. The first person to write seriously about the number and size of atoms was Johann Magnenus. In a book, Democritus Reviviscens, published in 1646, he describes an experiment in which he studied the diffu