Description

Over the last thirty years, the study of liquids containing polymers, surfactants or colloidal particles has developed from a loose assembly of facts into a coherent discipline with substantial predictive power. These liquids expand our conception of what condensed matter can do. Such structured-fluid phenomena dominate the physical environment within living cells. This book teaches how to think of these fluids from a unified point of view, showing the far-reaching effects of thermal fluctuations in producing forces and motions. Keeping mathematics to a minimum, the book seeks the simplest explanations that account for the distinctive scaling properties of these fluids. An example is the growth of viscosity of a polymer solution as the cube of the molecular weight of the constituent polymers. Another is the hydrodynamic radius of a colloidal aggregate, which remains comparable to its geometrical radius even though the density of particles in the aggregate becomes arbitrarily small. The book aims for a simplicity, unity and depth not found in previous treatments. The text is supplemented by numerous figures, tables and problems to aid the student.

Features

• Written by one of the leading figures in the field.
• Unique textbook, filling an important niche.
• Uses core set of principles to explain many phenomena.
• Contains simple explanations, keeping mathematics to a minimum.
• Includes numerous figures, tables and exercises to aid students.

Reviews

"Structural Fluids is well constructed and a pleasure to readStructural Fluids will be widely used and will be a must read for any student of soft condensed matter physics. Even practicing condensed matter physicists will gain a great deal of insight from it, and I predict it will become a fixture of many bookshelves. It certainly is on mine."--David Weitz, Physics Today

Product Details

232 pages; 81 halftones & line illus.; ISBN13: 978-0-19-852688-9ISBN10: 0-19-852688-1

About the Author(s)