A theoretical model has been derived to examine the dissociation of shockhyphen;compressed liquid nitrogen. An important feature of the model is the introduction of a binding energy for the atomic state which leads to a volumehyphen;dependent dissociation energy. Calculated shock pressures and shock temperatures are in agreement with experiment. The model correctly predicts the highly unusual feature of a reflected shock point lying above the principal Hugoniot and of a decrease in the temperature of a reflected shock. The shock cooling is shown to be the consequence of the volume dependent dissociation energy. The overall transition is from a molecular to a metallic liquid.
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