A table is presented that compares energies that govern a variety of phenomena in materials science: thermal, structural and chemical energies; energies associated with the formation of vacancies, dislocations and interfaces; energies associated with the application of an external load, strain, magnetic field, or supersaturation. A simple argument, based on the polytetrahedral nature of the structure of liquids, is presented to explain why the congurational part of the entropy of melting for many elements is close to 1k.
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