ABSTRACT
I. From Soddy-Fajans through Urey-Greiff ......................................................................... 1
II. Equilibrium Systems — General ......................................................................................... 3
III. Equilibrium in Ideal Gases .................................................................................................. 4
A. Classical and Quantum Mechanical Systems.............................................................. 4
B. The Reduced Partition Function Ratio of an Ideal Gas .............................................. 5
1. Numerical Calculation of the Reduced Partition Function Ratio ........................ 7
C. Corrections to the Bigeleisen-Mayer Equation.......................................................... 8
IV. Isotope Chemistry and Molecular Structure...................................................................... 12
A. The First Order Rules of Isotope Chemistry ............................................................. 12
B. Statistical Mechanical Perturbation Theory .............................................................. 13
C. Polynomial Expansions of the Reduced Partition Function Ratio............................ 14
V. Kinetic Isotope Effects....................................................................................................... 18
VI. Condensed Matter Isotope Effects ..................................................................................... 25
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... 32
References....................................................................................................................................... 33
Isotopes were discovered in radiochemical investigations of the decay of the heavy elements.
Products were found with different nuclear properties, which could not be separated chemically, but
stood in the same place in the Periodic Table; e.g. Radium,
