Soft Interfaces : Lecture Notes of the Les Houches Summer School: Volume 98, July 2012 PDF

Many of the distinctive and useful phenomena of soft matter come from its interaction with interfaces.

Examples are the peeling of a strip of adhesive tape, the coating of a surface, the curling of a fiber via capillary forces, or the collapse of a porous sponge.

These interfacial phenomena are distinct from the intrinsic behavior of a soft material like a gel or a microemulsion.

Yet many forms of interfacial phenomena can be understood via common principles validfor many forms of soft matter.

Our goal in organizing this school was to give students a grasp of these common principles and their many ramifications and possibilities. The Les Houches Summer School comprised over fifty 90-minute lectures over four weeks.

Four four-lecture courses by Howard Stone, Michael Cates, David Nelson and L.

Mahadevan served as an anchor for the program. A number of shorter courses and seminars rounded out the school.

This volume collects the lecture notes of the school.