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:
“When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Under the lindens on the heather,
There was our double resting-place.”
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