by John J. Shea, in IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine, July-August 2018
The IOP Concise Physics series of books are short texts that provide readers with an introduction to key principles and current research topics. These books are aimed at researchers and students of all levels with an interest in physics and related subjects. This book is an introduction to the gas phase that originiated from a set of lecture notes from a core first-year lecture course in physical chemistry taught at the University of Oxford. After introducing states of matter and the gas phase in general, properties of gases, such as pressure, temperature, and volume, are described. The relationships between these properties are explained at a molecular level, and simple models are presented that allow various gas laws to be derived. Finally, collisional properties of gases are used to explain a number of gas phase phenomena, including diffusion, effusion, and thermal conductivity. The concise and focused nature of this book on a single topic makes it very readable. You will quickly grasp the fundamental principle of gas phase properties. Having a good working knowledge of this subject matter is a stepping stone to many other processes and technology areas, especially in chemical kinetics, vacuum science, and plasma physics. This is an outstanding review of a key topic in physics.