Document Type
Article
Publication Date
January 2018
Abstract
This paper is a combination of the discussion of two nineteenth century theoretical giantsLars Onsager and C. M. Sliepcevich, their works in general, and specifically the famousreciprocal relations of Onsager with respect to irreversible thermodynamics. Emphasis isplaced on their penetrating depth and breadth of analysis so inherently necessary in theirproblem-solving endeavors. The landscape of their work will be laid out for the readerby a comparison of Onsager’s microscopic statistical mechanics derivation of the famousreciprocal relationships and a macroscopic thermodynamic derivation published by C. M.Sliepsevich that led to considerable discussion in the literature in the 1960’s. Somelabelled this discussion a controversy; this paper builds the case that the two derivationsare complimentary and supportive of each other.Also, the reader is challenged to decide; were they mathematicians, chemists, physicists,engineers, or thermodynamicists? Whatever their discipline the twenty-first centuryneeds theoreticians such as their likes.This author acknowledges from the outset that little theoretical originality on his part ispresented herein unless it is in the unique way in which the comparison of the twoderivations is presentedThe second part of the combination is n of and his graduate students (Sliecevich andFinn, 1963 and Sliepcevich et. al., 1966)
Citation
Babcock, R. (2018). Onsager Reciprocal Relations: Microscopic (Onsager) or Macroscopic (Sliepcevich). Chemical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/chegpub/1