The van der Waals radius, rw, of an atom is the radius of an imaginary hard sphere which can be used to model the atom for many purposes. It is named after Johannes Diderik van der Waals, winner of the 1910 Nobel Prize in Physics, as he was the first to recognise that atoms had a finite size (i.e., that atoms were not simply points) and to demonstrate the physical consequences of their size through the van der Waals equation of state.
Read more about Van Der Waals Radius: Van Der Waals Volume, Methods of Determination
Famous quotes containing the words van and/or der:
“His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way, and blinking in the odd bilboquet fashion peculiar to eyelids in his abnormal position. Even more extraordinary than the variety and velocity of the movements he made in imitation of animal hind legs was the effortlessness of his stance.”
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“Under the lindens on the heather,
There was our double resting-place.”
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