PHYS-4724: Soft Matter Physics

Description: Physical characteristics of various soft matter systems including liquids, liquid crystals, polymers, colloids, surfactants, granular materials, and biological soft materials. Van der Waals and electrostatic interactions in the context of soft matter. Descriptions of soft matter phases, phase diagrams, phase separation, and phase transitions. Theories of self-assembly and self-organization. Problems in and connections between elasticity, viscoelasticity, and mechanics of fluids including capillarity and wetting. Model of random walk and its applications to colloidal systems. Applications of variational methods in soft matter. Computer simulation methods in soft matter.

Pathways: N/A

Course Hours: 3 credits

Corequisites: N/A

Crosslist: N/A

Repeatability: N/A