Gases, Liquids and Solids: And Other States of Matter

This is the third edition of a well-established and highly successful undergraduate text. The content of the second edition has been reworked and added to wherever necessary. There are new sections on amorphous solids and liquid crystals, and completely new chapters on colloids and polymers. Using elementary mathematics and simple models, Professor Tabor leads the reader skillfully and systematically from the basic physics of interatomic and intermolecular forces, temperature, heat and thermodynamics, to a coherent understanding of the bulk properties of gases, liquids, solids, liquid crystals, colloids, and polymers. The abiding theme is that all these macroscopic material properties can be understood as the result of the competition between thermal energy and intermolecular or interatomic forces.