Overview
- Editors:
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Raymond Kapral
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Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Kenneth Showalter
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Department of Chemistry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA
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Table of contents (18 chapters)
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Spiral Waves
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- Stefan C. Müller, Theo Plesser
Pages 57-92
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- John J. Tyson, James P. Keener
Pages 93-118
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- Alexander S. Mikhailov, Vladimir S. Zykov
Pages 119-162
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- J. A. Sepulchre, A. Babloyantz
Pages 191-217
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Turing and Turing-Like Patterns
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Front Matter
Pages 219-219
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- J. Boissonade, E. Dulos, P. De Kepper
Pages 221-268
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- Qi Ouyang, Harry L. Swinney
Pages 269-295
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- István Lengyel, Irving R. Epstein
Pages 297-322
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- P. Borckmans, G. Dewel, A. De Wit, D. Walgraef
Pages 323-363
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- Michael Menzinger, Arkady B. Rovinsky
Pages 365-397
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Chemical Wave Dynamics
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Front Matter
Pages 399-399
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- Eugenia Mori, Xiaolin Chu, John Ross
Pages 419-446
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- Stephen K. Scott, Kenneth Showalter
Pages 485-516
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About this book
The concept of macroscopic waves and patterns developing from chemical reaction coupling with diffusion was presented, apparently for the first time, at the Main Meeting of the Deutsche Bunsengesellschaft fur Angewandte Physikalische Chemie, held in Dresden, Germany from May 21 to 24, 1906. Robert Luther, Director of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory in Leipzig, read his paper on the discovery and analysis of propagating reaction-diffusion fronts in autocatalytic chemical reactions [1, 2]. He presented an equation for the velocity of these new waves, V = a(KDC)1/2, and asserted that they might have features in common with propagating action potentials in nerve cell axons. During the discussion period, a skeptic in the audience voiced his objections to this notion. It was none other than the great physical chemist Walther Nernst, who believed that nerve impulse propagation was far too rapid to be akin to the propagating fronts. He was also not willing to accept Luther's wave velocity equation without a derivation. Luther stood his ground, saying his equation was "a simple consequence of the corresponding differential equation. " He described several different autocatalytic reactions that exhibit propagating fronts (recommending gelling the solution to prevent convection) and even presented a demonstration: the autocatalytic permanganate oxidation of oxalate was carried out in a test tube with the image of the front projected onto a screen for the audience.
Editors and Affiliations
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Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Raymond Kapral
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Department of Chemistry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA
Kenneth Showalter
