Calculation of the Slip Velocity of a Rarefied Gas on a Solid Spherical Surface with Allowance for Accommodation Coefficients

The slip velocity of a rarefied gas with inhomogeneous temperature and mass velocity on a solid spherical surface is calculated with the use of a twomoment boundary condition in the linear approximation in terms of the Knudsen number. The dependence of the slip velocity on accommodation coefficients of the two first moments of the distribution function is studied.     

Lattice gas simulations of two-dimensional liquid foams

Liquid foam is a dense random packing of gas bubbles in a small amount of immiscible liquid containing surfactants. The liquid within the Plateau borders, although small in volume, causes considerable difficulties to investigations of the physical properties of foams, and the situation becomes even more complicated if the flow of the liquid through the foam is considered too. Here we propose a fresh approach to tackling these issues by introducing a discrete two-dimensional hybrid lattice gas model of liquid foams. While lattice gas models have been used to model two-phase liquids in the past, their application to the study of liquid foams is novel and proves promising. We represent bubble surfaces by a finite number of nodes, and model the surrounding liquid as a lattice gas (with a finite number of liquid particles). The gas in the bubbles is treated as an ideal gas at constant temperature. The model is tested by choosing an arbitrarily shaped bubble that evolves into a circular shape in agreement with Laplaces law. The model is then employed to simulate periodic ordered and disordered dry and wet foams. Since our model is specifically designed to handle wet foams up to a critical liquid fraction of 0.16 (void fraction of random packing of disks), we are able to compute the variation in coordination number (average number of neighbours of a bubble) over the whole range of liquid fractions, and we find it to be a linear function of the shear modulus.This paper was presented at the first Annual European Rheology Conference (AERC) held in Guimarães, Portugal, 11–13 September 2003.     

Intermolecular Vibrational Relaxation in Mixtures of Excited Benzophenone and Anthraquinone Molecules with Water Vapor

The intermolecular vibrational energy transfer from triplet molecules of benzophenone and anthraquinone to H₂O molecules has been investigated. To determine the rates of establishment of vibrational (V-V) and thermal (V-T) equilibrium in a vibrational quasi-continuum of mixed singlet-triplet levels, the dependences of the decay rates and intensities of the fast and slow components of delayed fluorescence on the H₂O vapor pressure have been investigated. For V-V relaxation, the efficiencies ₁ and the mean energies E transferred per collision in mixtures with H₂O and other polyatomic foreign gases have been compared. It has been established that the efficiencies ₁ for quasi-resonant vibrational energy transfer (V-V) from benzophenone and anthraquinone to H₂O are an order of magnitude lower than the gas-kinetic ones and lower than those obtained under the same experimental conditions for such foreign gases as C₅H₁₂, SF₆, and CCl₄, and decrease with increasing temperature in the 433–513 K range. It has been concluded that the mechanism of V-V relaxation in mixtures with H₂O are determined by long-range attractive forces. In mixtures with H₂O, no acceleration of V-T relaxation due to the formation of hydrogen bonds has been revealed. The low-efficiency thermalization process (V-T relaxation) is controlled by short-range repulsive forces, and the differences between the intensities ₂ for mixtures of benzophenone and anthraquinone with H₂O and other polyatomic gases are determined by the change in the reduced mass of interacting molecules.     

Early Gravity-Wave Detection Experiments, 1960-1975

I discuss the experiments of Joseph Weber (1919-2000) of the University of Maryland between 1960 and 1973 that were aimed at the detection of gravity waves. He used throughout a quadratic detector to demodulate his antenna signal, which I analyze and compare to a linear detector.The latter was used by all of the other groups that entered the field. Of these, Richard Garwin and I at IBM were one of the first groups to publish, and I discuss in detail our experiments between 1973 and 1975. I then discuss the experiments that were carried out at Bell Labs-Rochester, Glasgow, Munich-Frascati,Moscow, and Tokyo. I compare the results, all of which were negative, with Webers claimed detection of large numbers of gravity-wave events, as many as seven per day. I conclude that these were not in fact gravity waves, but artifacts of his extremely hands-on data-analysis procedures, which I discuss in detail. Finally, I speculate on how this came about.     

Chemistry in microstructured reactors

The application of microstructured reactors in the chemical process industry has gained significant importance in recent years. Companies that offer not only microstructured reactors, but also entire chemical process plants and services relating to them, are already in existence. In addition, many institutes and universities are active within this field, and process-engineering-oriented reviews and a specialized book are available. Microstructured systems can be applied with particular success in the investigation of highly exothermic and fast reactions. Often the presence of temperature-induced side reactions can be significantly reduced through isothermal operations. Although microstructured reaction techniques have been shown to optimize many synthetic procedures, they have not yet received the attention they deserve in organic chemistry. For this reason, this Review aims to address this by providing an overview of the chemistry in microstructured reactors, grouped into liquid-phase, gas-phase, and gas-liquid reactions.     

Beam-injection flame furnace AAS: comparison of different nozzle types for beam generation and application of sub-critical liquid carbon dioxide as carrier and gas pressure pump

In beam injection flame furnace AAS (BIFF-AAS) the sample is introduced as a free-flying high-speed liquid beam into an AAS flame-heated nickel tube, resulting in a considerable improvement in the power of detection. For optimization of beam generation different nozzle types (smooth jet nozzles, turbulent working nozzles) have been compared at different pressures. It was found that the type of the nozzle hardly influences the analytical signal. However, the flow rates resulting from the different inner diameters of the nozzles and the applied pressures led to drastic changes in the analytical signal. For these investigations a recently developed 0.6 MPa (84 psig) diaphragm pump system was used. Furthermore, for the first time ever sub-critical liquid carbon dioxide has been used simultaneously as a liquid gas-pressure pump, as carrier in a flow-injection system (FIA), and for the beam generation. Transport of the carrier takes place as a result of the head pressure (6 MPa) of the liquid CO₂ in the gas cylinder. For volatile elements (e.g. Cd, Hg, Pb, and Tl) detection limits between 0.2 µg L^–1 (Cd) and 28 µg L^–1 (Hg) were found, the standard deviation was from 0.6% to 3.2% depending on the element, concentration, and sample volume used. The use of liquid CO₂ as a carrier in FIA systems opens up new possibilities for online sample pretreatment and trace preconcentration.     

Continuous Restricted Radial Motion of a Gas under the Action of a Piston

The possibility of continuous conjugation of the straightline radial motion of a gas sphere toward the center and away from the center with the motion where the gas in the entire sphere stops simultaneously is shown. The motion is described by an invariant submodel of rank 1. Time reflections allow one to construct a solution that describes a periodic continuous restricted motion of the gas sphere under the action of a piston.     

Nonideal Bose Gases: Correlation Inequalities and Bose Condensation

We consider two simple model systems describing effective repulsion in a nonideal Bose gas. The interaction Hamiltonians in these systems can be analytically represented as functions of the occupation number operators for modes with nonzero momenta (p0). One of these models contains an interaction term corresponding to repulsion of bosons with the mode p=0 and ensuring the thermodynamic superstability of the system; the other model does not contain such a term. We use the Bogoliubov–Dirac–Ginibre approximation and the method of correlation inequalities to prove that a Bose condensate can exist in these model systems. Because of the character of interaction, the condensate can be formed in the superstable case for any values of the spatial dimensions, temperature, and positive chemical potentials.