BG1005 Materials Sciences_ Homework #3

You are required to hand in the solutions for HW#2, Q3, HW#3, Q1, Q3,
Q5, & Q6. (due 12:00 pm noon, April 26, 2011)

Question 1. (Callister 10.4)

(a) For the solidification of nickel, calculate the critical radius r* and the activation free
energy ∆G* if nucleation is homogeneous. Values for the latent heat of fusion and
surface free energy are -2.53 x 109 J/m3 and 0.255 J/m2, respectively. Use the
supercooling value found in Table 10.1.

(b) Now calculate the number of atoms found in a nucleus of critical size. Assume a
lattice parameter of 0.360 nm for solid nickel at its melting temperature.

Question 2. (Callister 10.5)

(a) Assume for the solidification of nickel (Problem 10.4) that nucleation is
homogeneous,
and the number of stable nuclei is 106 nuclei per cubic meter. Calculate the critical radius
and the number of stable nuclei that exist at the following degrees of supercooling: 200 K
and 300 K.

(b) What is significant about the magnitudes of these critical radii and the numbers of
stable nuclei?

Question 3. (Callister 12.4)

Demonstrate that the minimum cation-to-anion radius ratio for a

coordination number of 8 is 0.732.

Question 4. (Callister 12.2)

Show that the minimum cation-to-anion radius ratio for a coordination

number of 4 is 0.225.
(hint: this case is a bit difficult. Let the tetrahedron be ABCD, O is the center of the
tetrahedron, O’ is the center of equilateral triangle BCD, you should be able to show that
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AO=(3/4)AO’= a , where a is the edge of the tetrahedron. The other way to visualize
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the tetrahedron is to put the four apex as 4 corners of a cube. Then the center of
tetrahedron must also be the center of the cube.)

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Question 5. (Callister 12.16)

Compute the theoretical density of ZnS (with Zinc Blende structure) given that the Zn-S
distance and bond angle are 0.234 nm and 109.5 o, respectively. How does this value
compare with the measured density?

Question 6. (Callister 12.21)

The unit cell for Fe3O4 (FeO-Fe2O3) has cubic symmetry with a unit cell edge length of
0.839 nm. If the density of this material is 5.24 g/cm3, compute its atomic packing factor.
For this computation, you will need to use ionic radii listed in Table 12.3.
(rFe2+= 0.077nm; rFe3+= 0.069 nm; rO2-= 0.14 nm)