Phase Transitions: Critical Phenomena and First-Order Transitions

Abstract

One of the most conspicuous properties of nature is the great diversity of size or length scales in the structure of the world. An ocean, for example, has currents that persist for thousands of kilometers and has tides of global extend; it also has waves that range in size from less than a centimeter to several meters; at much finer resolution, seawater must be regarded as an aggregate of molecules whose characteristic scale of length is roughly 10⁻⁸ cm. From the smallest structure to the largest is a span of some 17 orders of magnitude.