  The competition between liquid and solid states of strongly correlated
electron systems occurs in a novel way in a strong magnetic field. The fact
that certain Landau level filling factors are especially favorable for the
formation of strongly correlated liquid states, gives rise to the fractional
quantum Hall effect. In this article we discuss some consequences of the
existence of incompressible states with fractionally charged quasiparticle
excitations for the thermodynamics of the liquid-solid transition.
