Structured Fluids: Polymers, Colloids, Surfactants

By Thomas A. Witten

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198526881
• ISBN13: 9780198526889
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.4" x 10.1"