Griffiths-Wheeler geometrical picture of critical phenomena: Experimental testing for liquid-liquid critical points

Abstract

An experimental approach to the verification of specific relations between thermodynamic properties as predicted from the Griffiths-Wheeler theory of critical phenomena in multicomponent systems is developed for the particular case of ordinary liquid-liquid critical points of binary mixtures. Densities rho(T) , isobaric heat capacities per unit volume C(p)(T) , and previously reported values of the slope of the critical line (dT/dp)c for five critical mixtures are used to check the thermodynamic consistency of C(p) and rho near the critical point. An appropriate treatment of rho (T) data is found to provide the key solution to this issue. In addition, various alternative treatments for C(p)(T) data provide values for both the critical exponent alpha and the ratio between the critical amplitudes of the heat capacity A+/A- that are in agreement with their widely accepted counterparts, whereas two-scale-factor universality is successfully verified in one of the systems studied.