Tracing the history of thought on the molecular origins of surface pheomena, this volume offers a critical and detailed examination and assessment of modern theories. The opening chapters survey the earliest efforts to recapture these phenomena by using crude mechanical models of liquids as well as subsequent quasi-thermodynamic methods. A discussion of statistical mechanics leads to the application of results in mean-field approximation to some tractable but artificial model systems. More realistic models are portrayed both by computer simulation and by approximations of the precise statistical equations. Emphasis throughout the text is consistently placed on the liquid-gas surface, with a focus on liquid-liquid surfaces in the final two chapters.
