Lecture notes (scanned copies of some of my notes and, on occasion, extra materials).
- Lect #1, Th 9/9/04: Introduction to soft materials, forces. Example of foam. (pdf, 2.9 MB)
- Lect #2, Tu 9/14/04: Surfactants. The van der Waals potential. (pdf, 500 kB)
- Lecture #3, Th 9/16/04: van der Waals cont'd (pdf, 1.3 MB).
- Lectures #3-4: A review of the
fundamentals of statistical mechanics: T, S, F, Q and the
Boltzmann factor; a couple of examples.
NOTE: an important page
(which I also omitted in class) was added to these notes on 9/23. The
document now has the added page. If you downloaded it earlier, here is
the additional page.)
- Lecture #4, Tu 9/21/04: Forces arising from fluctuations: osmotic pressure and depletion attraction.
- Lecture #5, Th 9/23/04: Introduction to polymers, including examples and the ideal-chain model.
- Lecture #6, Tu 9/28/04: Details of the freely-jointed-chain calculation (which was
merely sketched out in class) (300kB). Adjustments to the freely-jointed-chain
model: Kuhn length and the Flory theory result (63kB).
The worm-like chain model of the
elasticity of a single polymer (pdf, 1.75 MB).
- Lecture #7, Th 9/30/04: The
Langevin equation, viscosity (values and a simple model), terminal
velocity and mean square displacement.
- Lecture #8, Tu 10/5/04: The Diffusion equation, derived from a simple hopping model, with examples (2.4 MB).
- Lecture #9, Th 10/7/04: The Dynamic light scattering (DLS) (300 kB).
- Lecture #10, Tu 10/12/04: Measuring potentials: the Boltzmann-distribution method and the Markovian dynamics method of Crocker and Grier (1.74 MB).
- Lectures #10-11, Tu 10/12 - Th 10/14/04: Liquid interfaces: surface
tension, Laplace pressure, droplet vibrations, shape of a free
interface, capillary rise (950 kB). De Gennes has written a long
review called "Wetting: Statics and Dynamics," Rev. Mod. Phys. 57, 827
(1985).
- Lecture #12, Tu 10/19: The shape of a liquid interface
and capillary forces; surfactants, Pickering emulsions and
problems associated with being an aphid. (2 MB pdf).
- Lecture #13 Th 10/21: Lipid
membranes: single-component membranes, cell membranes, and elasticity.
- Lecture #14-15: Electrostatics in solution:
Poisson-Boltzmann theory, the Debye-Huckel approximation, and the
DLVO potential. (Word file, 1.3MB)
- Lecture #16-17: Packing in 3D: minimum contact number, icosahedra, and mesophases (liquid crystals). (Word file, 2.1MB)
- Lecture #18: The phase diagram of hard spheres: a crude geometric model. (Word file, 0.7MB)
- Lecture #19-20: The Flory Huggins theory, mean-field theory of polymer melts and solutions (.doc file, 930 MB).
- Lecture #22-23: Colloidal gels and the fractal dimension, and diffusion-limited aggregation, and other comments on gels.
- Lectures #24-25: Hydrodynamics at low Reynolds number. (.doc file, 630kB)
- Lectures #26: The complex shear
modulus and viscoelasticity (.doc file, 410kB)
A. Dinsmore, 9/2004