Melting - Melting Criteria

Melting Criteria

Among the theoretical criteria for melting, the Lindemann and Born criteria are those most frequently used as a basis to analyse the melting conditions . The Lindemann criterion states that melting occurs because of vibrational instability, e.g. crystals melt when the average amplitude of thermal vibrations of atoms is relatively high compared with interatomic distances, e.g. <δu2>1/2 > δLRs, where δu is the atomic displacement, the Lindemann parameter δL ≈ 0.20...0.25 and Rs is a half of the inter-atomic distance. The Lindemann melting criterion is supported by experimental data both for crystalline materials and for glass-liquid transitions in amorphous materials. The Born criterion is based on rigidity catastrophe caused by the vanishing elastic shear modulus, e.g. when the crystal no longer has sufficient rigidity to mechanically withstand load.

Read more about this topic:  Melting

Famous quotes containing the words melting and/or criteria:

    Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
    Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
    List to the heavy part the music bears,
    “Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
    Droop herbs and flowers;
    Fall grief in showers;
    “Our beauties are not ours”:
    Oh, I could still,
    Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
    Drop, drop, drop, drop,
    Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

    There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.
    —H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)