Talk:Graham's law

Amonton's contribution

This page stated that Amontons discovered Graham's law in 1702. That would place him as the earliest formulator of the kinetic theory, decades before Daniel Bernoulli who is credited most everywhere. I can find no mention of Amontons having made any such discovery but he is credited with discovering Charles's law. I have made the correction.

References

1. ^ Cardwell, D.S.L (1971) From Watt to Clausius, pp18-19

Is this page right?

There is no mention of Graham at all in Cardwell (supra) and this relationship is one I associate with other people.

Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has:

In 1831 Graham read a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in which he showed that, at constant pressure, the rate of diffusion of a gas was inversely proportional to the square root of its density. For this discovery he won the society's Keith prize; the principle has become known as ‘Graham's law’.

-which is a different kettle of fish.

I will amend unless I hear some authoritative account from elsewhere. Cutler 13:27, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

References

• ^ Michael Stanley, ‘Graham, Thomas (1805-1869)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11224, accessed 14 July 2005>

Ok everyone, this has been sitting here for a long time so I'm just going to completely change it and remove the "disputed" marker. I've got a 1998 Zumdahl textbook, a Baron's 6th edition SAT II Chemistry prep book, and the Complete Idiot's guide to Chemistry here, and they all pretty much agree, so I'm just going to go with it. Edit as appropriate : )Lepidoptera 16:56, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Diffusion and effusion

Graham's Law refers to both diffusion and effusion (according to Hicks, 'Comprehensive Chemistry'). The article should mention both without changing the title. MP (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

unclear shortcut in formula

It took me a while to wrap my head arround why in this formula: ${{\mbox{Rate}}_{1} \over {\mbox{Rate}}_{2}}={\sqrt {M_{2} \over M_{1}}}$

the 1 and 2 suddenly swap places on the right side. No reason for this is stated clearly.

I would suggest to add something like of the following steps to make things more clear:

${\mbox{Rate}}_{1}={1 \over {\sqrt {M_{1}}}},{\mbox{Rate}}_{2}={1 \over {\sqrt {M_{2}}}},$

${{\mbox{Rate}}_{1} \over {\mbox{Rate}}_{2}}={{1 \over {\sqrt {M_{1}}}} \over {1 \over {\sqrt {M_{2}}}}}$

Jakov (talk) 08:50, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

This is not correct because ${\mbox{Rate}}_{1}={1 \over {\sqrt {M_{1}}}}$ is not true. It is actually ${\mbox{Rate}}_{1}={constant \over {\sqrt {M_{1}}}}$, and similarly ${\mbox{Rate}}_{2}={constant \over {\sqrt {M_{2}}}}$, where the constant can be evaluated using the kinetic theory of gases. When one rate is divided by the other, the constants cancel.

However a simpler method is already in the article, with the 3 equations at the end of the History section. Dirac66 (talk) 18:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Repetition

Needs to be carefully pruned to remove some repetition, which is making the article unnecessarily difficult to understand. Ehrenkater (talk) 21:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)