Specificity Of The London-Eisenschitz Wang Force*

Authors

Jerrold M. Yos, University Of Nebraska, Lincoln
William L. Bade, University Of Nebraska, Lincoln
Herbert Jehle, University Of Nebraska, Lincoln

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

1957

Comments

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 43:4 (1957), pp. 341-346. Copyright 1957 National Academy of Science USA. Used by permission.

Abstract

The London force between macromolecules immersed in a liquid medium has an interesting property which may be of biological significance. For the purpose of formulating the London interaction, one may represent each macromolecule by a set of electric dipole oscillators of specified polarizability, frequency, and orientation. To consider the simplest case, one may study macromolecules of globular form not in direct contact with each other. (They might be separated by Debyeiuckel- Onsager atmospheres made up of molecules from the medium; then the equilibrium distance between the macromolecules would be regulated by concentration changes in the ionic medium.)' Such a geometrical arrangement means that the dipole oscillators, which actually are distributed all over a macromolecule, can be replaced by oscillators located at this macromolecule's center. The quadrupole, octupole, etc., terms (which arise when the oscillators are displaced to the molecular center) can be neglected in a crude first approximation.