Customer Reviews

Structured Fluids: Polymers, Colloids, Surfactants

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For errata and further information on Structured Fluids, see the author's web site
http://jfi.uchicago.edu/~tten/StructuredFluids/

I hope you find this useful.... T. Witten, Author.

Structured Fluids relies more on presenting the physical picture than mathematical machinery, stresses more on intuition and scaling concepts than on derivations and obstrusive pages of equations. In doing so, it makes itself easier to grasp than say the texts by Chaikin and Lubensky or for that matter by Kleman and Lavrentovich. The formalism is done with enough depth, to benefit both beginners and experts of the field, and thus the book is better suited for graduate student course than say RAL Jones or Hamley's texts.

The essential knowledge related to polymers, colloids and surfactants is in here, and the book is fairly upto date with recent advances in these areas. The references listed at the end of each chapter are most useful pointers for anyone who seeks to delve deeper into the mysteries of soft matter. In fact, reading this text reminds one of the style of de Gennes, and having been written in the same spirit by these very illustrous scientists, the book is comprehensive and erudite in content and presentation.

The book starts off by talking about fundamentals, including elements of statistical physics and experimental probes used to investigate the soft matter. This sets stage for discussion of various themes related to say

polymers, where random walk statistics capture essential physics required to describe a coil, scaling concepts and basic thermodynamics tells about coil dimensions in different solvents and extension of brownian dynamics explains mobility of chains. The corresponding experimental tools of light scattering and viscosity highlight how these can be measured.

colloids, where the nature of interaction between colloidal particles determines their static and dynamic behavior, leading to experimentally observed self-assembly and aggregation.

interfaces, where basics of surface tension come in to explain behavior of colloids and polymers near walls and interfaces.

surfactants, which borrows principles from previous chapters, exhibiting rich phase behavior dictated by statistical thermodynamics, dynamics related to solvent quality and aggregation dependent on aggregation.

A must read for everyone interested, active (and maybe even for experts) in the field!