Aerosols

Definitions

Aerosols vary in their dispersity. A monodisperse aerosol, producible in the laboratory, contains particles of uniform size. Most aerosols, however, as polydisperse colloidal systems, exhibit a range of particle sizes. Liquid droplets are almost always nearly spherical, but scientists use an equivalent diameter to characterize the properties of various shapes of solid particles, some very irregular. The equivalent diameter is the diameter of a spherical particle with the same value of some physical property as the irregular particle. The equivalent volume diameter (d_e) is defined as the diameter of a sphere of the same volume as that of the irregular particle. Also commonly used is the aerodynamic diameter, d_a.