Structured Fluids : Polymers, Colloids, Surfactants Hardback

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.