Phys 6013 - Soft Matter Physics
Time and Place:
Monday, Wednesday, 9:30 - 11.00 am, C-3067
First class, Wednesday September 8, 9:30 - 11.00 am, C-3067
Final Exam
Phys 6013 exam on Dec xx (TBD) in C-3067 from 10.00-12.00
Instructor:
Anand Yethiraj, CP-3029, phone 2113, Email: anand_AT_physics.mun.ca
Text:
Required: Thomas A. Witten, "Structured fluids", Oxford University Press, 2004.
Reference: Rob Phillips, Jane Kondev, Julie Theriot, “Physical Biology of the Cell", Garland Science Press, 2008.
Evaluation
- Assignments (45%) and midterm (15%): 60 %
- Project (In-class presentation) : 20 %
- Final : 20 %
Course Materials: click here for Assignments and Readings
Course Outline
This course introduces the essential principles of soft matter physics or structured fluids. This includes a wide range of materials, such as polymers, colloids, surfactants, emulsions, and biomaterials such as proteins, lipids and cells.
Project: In-class presentation
During the course, each student will present 1 full-length in-class presentation in lecture format on an assigned topic. Project requirements will include an in-class presentation of an assigned reading. This could be a chapter in a book, or a review article, and will be assigned early in the course. These presentations will take place in the last 2-3 weeks of the course.
Detailed guidelines will be posted here shortly.
Soft Matter Phenomenology (Witten Chapter 1 and readings at Chapter end)
- What is soft condensed matter? What are structured fluids?
- Colloids, polymers, amphiphiles, liquid crystals
- Self-organization
- Rheology: mechanical response of matter to a shear stress
Statistical Physics Fundamentals (Witten Chapter 2 and your favourite Statmech book)
- Equilibrium and probabilities
- Approach to Equilibrium
- Magnitude of a liquid's response
- Experimental probes of structured fluids
- Biophysics Interlude: Hierarchical self-organization in biomaterials
Experimental Techniques in Soft Matter
Interspersed with the lectures there will be demonstrations of experimental techniques applicable to soft matter.
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Examples:
- Rheology
- Polarized light optical microscopy and liquid crystal phase transitions
- Brownian motion and optical tweezers in colloidal suspensions
Polymers and Polymer Solutions (Witten Chapter 3 and 4)
- Chain statistics in polymer melts
- Polymers at interfaces
- Viscoelasticity of polymers: time-temperature superposition
- The tube model and reptation
- Introduction to gels and the percolation model
Colloidal Dispersions (Witten Chapter 5)
- Brownian motion and Stokes-Einstein equation
- Interparticle Interactions
- Biophysics Interlude: Electrostatics for Salty Solutions (Chapter 9, Physical Biology of the Cell)
- Colloidal Self-assembly
- Flow.
Dynamics
- Random Walks and Diffusion
- "The mathematics of water" (Chapter 12, Physical Biology of the Cell)
Surfactants and self-assembled phases in amphiphilic solutions (Witten Chapter 7)
- Spherical micelles and the CMC
- Cylindrical micelles
- Bilayers and vesicles
- The elasticity and fluctuations of membranes
- Microphase separation in block copolymers
