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Hi Mr. Fizzix Guy! It is good to hear from you!
Regarding the source of the name 'plasma' for ionized gas and for
blood fluid, I am uncertain of the connection. I have pasted below
what the Oxford English Dictionary gives as the various definitions
and usages of 'plasma'. I had always heard it said that Irving
Langmuir (essentially the father of plasma physics) gave the medium
its name, saying that it had the property to take the shape of the
container in which it was placed. (how liquids and gases escaped
getting the same name from him is beyond my ability to conjecture...)
That attribution would appear to be the one quoted under definition 6.
The last example entry, by Lankester, under definition 4 (the
medical/biological definition) seems to denote a similar line of
thought--that the biological plasma is formless without a container.
Maybe Langmuir's designation for ionized gas arose more out of the
sense that it is formless and its edges are diffuse, rather than that
it took the shape of the surrounding container.
So, I fear I have only been able to contribute a diffuse and
ill-bounded bit of information on this question...
Take care.
-Doug
PS Irving Langmuir, from what I know about him, would be an
interesting subject for a report for a high school student interested
in the physical sciences. He essentially started plasma physics. He
also did some early studies on surface physics, and fooled around
with cloud seeding for making rain. He also wrote a very interesting
article that was reprinted in Physics Today a few years ago about
"pathological science," essentially a set of guidelines to
discriminate between legitimate scientific results and bogus hype.
A few colleagues have recently recommended to me the book 'Tuxedo
Park', about an early 20th century physicist (whose name I forget)
who got filthy rich in the stock market in the 1920s, then served the
US government during WWII by heading the MIT radar lab. (Of course,
maybe my colleagues just like it because it is a story about a
physicist who gets rich....)
________________________________________
Douglass S. Darrow Telephone: +1-609-243-2854
Principal Research Physicist Fax: +1-609-243-2665
MS 15
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
PO Box 451
Princeton, NJ 08543-0451, USA
You may view the Laboratory's home page at: http://www.pppl.gov
Definitions of 'plasma', from the Oxford English Dictionary, are:
1. Form, mould, shape. Obs. rare.
1712 H. More's Antid. Ath. I. v. §3 schol., They act upon the
Matter and form it into this or that Plasma or Fashion. 1824-9 LANDOR
Imag. Conv., Southey & Porson ii. Wks. 1846 I. 83/2 A great portion
of his compositions is not poetry, but only the plasma or matrix of
poetry. Ibid. Alfieri & Salomon 190/1 We Italians sometimes fall into
what..you may call the plasma of witticism, by mere mistake, and
against our genius.
4. Biol. = PLASM 4.
1864 WEBSTER, Plasma..2. (Physiol.) The viscous material of a cell
from which the new developments take place. 1867 J. HOGG Microsc. I.
iii. 223 For certain delicate organisms, as the Desmidaceae and
Diatomaceae, whose plasma may be affected by too dense a medium. 1872
BEALE Bioplasm i. §14 As the germ of every living thing consists of
matter having the wonderful properties already mentioned, I have
called it germinal matter; but the most convenient and least
objectionable name for it is living plasma or bioplasm. 1876
LANKESTER tr. Haeckel's Hist. Creat. I. 185 The entire
body..consists..of shapeless plasma, or protoplasm.
6. Physics. A gas in which there are positive ions and free
negative electrons, usu. in approximately equal numbers throughout
and therefore electrically neutral; esp. one exhibiting phenomena due
to the collective interaction of the charges. Also, any analogous
collection of charged particles in which one or both kinds are
mobile, as the conduction electrons in a metal or the ions in a salt
solution.
Electrical neutrality and collective phenomena are often made
necessary characteristics of a plasma (e.g. quot. 19672).
1928 I. LANGMUIR in Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. XIV. 628 It seemed that
these oscillations must be regarded as compressional electric waves
somewhat analogous to sound waves. Except near the electrodes..the
ionized gas contains ions and electrons in about equal numbers so
that the resultant space charge is very small. We shall use the name
plasma to describe this region containing balanced charges of ions
and electrons. 1930 Physical Rev. XXXVII. 1467 The plasma used in
this investigation was the positive column of a mercury arc. 1941
MILLMAN & SEELY Electronics x. 307 The largest portion of a glow
discharge is the plasma. Ibid. 309 In addition to the electrons and
ions that exist in equal concentrations, a plasma contains many gas
molecules. 1958 Engineering 31 Jan. 134/2 The stable plasma reaches
the high temperatures, of the order of 5 million deg. K., necessary
for producing thermonuclear reactions. 1960 Soviet Physics Doklady V.
363 At a distance from the earth of 4 earth radii, a plasma with a
temperature of not more than tens of thousands of degrees was
detected. 1966 McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. X. 386/1 If the
over-all dimensions of a region containing a plasma are small
compared to D, only simple collisional or single-particle behavior is
to be expected, the plasma will behave as an ordinary low-density
gas, and collective processes will not be important. 1967 L. K.
BRANSON Introd. Electronics ix. 315 The plasma consists of a mixture
of positive, negative, and neutral particles and ..in any given
volume-element there are equal numbers of ions and electrons.
Further, the plasma..fills the entire volume between anode and
cathode except for a narrow region at the cathode called the sheath.
1967 CONDON & ODISHAW Handbk. Physics (ed. 2) IV. xi. 188/1 The
phenomena that occur in a plasma and distinguish it from any
arbitrary collection of charged particles are the near equality of
positive and negative charges throughout the plasma volume and the
ability of the charges to participate in plasma oscillations. 1969
STEELE & VURAL Wave Interactions in Solid State Plasmas i. 4 In a
metal like copper, the free electrons comprising the plasma are
electrically compensated by the positively ionized copper atoms. 1971
E. NASSER Fundamentals of Gaseous Ionization & Plasma Electronics
xiv. 427 Liquid plasmas exist in salt solutions where the positive
and negative ions move separately. 1974 R. C. DAVIDSON Theory of
Nonneutral Plasmas p. xi, Nonneutral plasmas exhibit collective
properties that are qualitatively similar to those of neutral
plasmas. For example, in klystrons and traveling-wave tubes, the
collective oscillations necessary for microwave generation and
amplification are excited even under conditions in which the electron
beams..are unneutralized. 1974 Nature 5 Apr. 494/2 In a cold plasma
(which is a good approximation for most of the magnetosphere away
from the equatorial region) there are two wave modes. 1976 T. BEER
Aerospace Environment i. 16 The solar wind is a plasma of hydrogen
ions (protons) and electrons travelling at speeds that range from 300
km s-1 to 1000 km s-1, depending on solar activity.
________________________________________
Douglass S. Darrow Telephone: +1-609-243-2854
Principal Research Physicist Fax: +1-609-243-2665
MS 15
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
PO Box 451
Princeton, NJ 08543-0451, USA
You may view the Laboratory's home page at: http://www.pppl.gov