Soft Matter: A History of Ideas | & Discussion | Prof. Gautam Menon

Описание: Soft Matter: A History of Ideas
Prof. Gautam Menon, Ashoka University.

Abstract: Textbooks that deal with the physics of materials almost exclusively describe hard solids. But much of what we see around us, including what our bodies are made up of, is soft, deformable, at room temperature and often fluid-like in its behaviour. One doesn't need quantum
mechanics to describe such soft matter but, given their complexity, even the right way to approach them isn't apparent. I plan to explore the genesis of some of the most important ideas behind this field: exotic types of order, entropy-driven transitions, the role of defects and topology, scaling arguments and active matter, pointing out that this is really physics at a human scale, accessible even in an undergraduate laboratory.