Theory of Simple Liquids

by Jean-Pierre Hansen, Ian R. McDonald

This book gives a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the theory of "simple" liquids. The new second edition has been rearranged and considerably expanded to give a balanced account both of basic theory and of the advances of the past decade. It presents the main ideas of modern liquid state theory in a way that is both pedagogical and self-contained. The book should be accessible to graduate students and research workers, both experimentalists and theorists, who have a good background in elementary mechanics.

Key Features
* Compares theoretical deductions with experimental results
* Molecular dynamics
* Monte Carlo computations
* Covers ionic, metallic, and molecular liquids

Genres: Physics

556 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Martina]

Hansen and McDonald's book is dubbed to be the best book on simple liquids. It's a classic, and after reading it, I can see why. The topics discussed in the book are done so well - introduced gradually and written in an easy to understand manner. The introduction is lovely; the chapter on the statistical physics of liquids is a must-read for every serious physicist. I was stunned how even the more difficult concepts, like ionic liquids, were well explained. Perhaps the only downside is that, while deriving certain expressions, steps were skipped over. But good grad students are supposed to be able to cope with that.

My review may be brief, but it doesn't convey the full extent of my exuberance; the book is amazing and I cannot recommend it enough.

[McKinley Paul]

Unfortunate that this is the main and most comprehensive text on these topics, the author’s exposition style tends not to work for me as they do lots of derivations and rarely emphasize enough which results are important and why.

[Xiang]

excellent book on the topic of liquid theory. Full of basic principles and enough math derivations for learners.