Soft Matter (eBook)

Roberto Piazza trained as a physicist at the school of Vittorio Degiorgio, and is now a professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, Associate Editor of the European Physical Journal E and coordinator of the European Space Agency's Topical Team for "Applications of colloids in microgravity" of the European Space Agency. He has made important contributions to research on nanoparticle suspensions, polymer and surfactant solutions and  biological macromolecules. He is not only a gifted physicists, but equally well versed in history and literature.

Foreword 6
Preface to the English edition 7
Contents 10
Overture: a special day 12
A life in suspense 18
A big cast of little characters 21
When it pays to be superficial 24
Colloidal Waterage, an award-winning firm 26
Rock and roll in suspense 28
Osmosis, the breath of a dispersed world 35
Colloidal Lego, matter made to measure 40
Softness without limit: fractal aggregates 44
Concrete: united by charge 48
Particles spreading waves: colloidal light and colors 51
A very particular particulate ink 57
Flying colloids: deceptive beauty of the aerosols 60
Freedom in chains 66
Long and disordered queues 66
A tale of cross-links and double-crosses 70
Necklaces for all tastes 74
Plastics: false solids with a biddable disposition 79
Snake dance 85
Entropy: disorder or freedom? 91
Elastic by chance 93
The secret of Mr Fantastic 95
Panta rei 97
Nightmares for Indiana Jones 104
Charged polymers: polyelectrolytes 106
Double-faced Janus molecules 109
Striding on water: the physics of Jesus bugs 110
Surfactants, a split personality 114
Soap bubbles: a paradise for kids and math nerds 118
Micelles: when surfactants find peace 124
As white as can be: the science of cleaning 126
A large and varied family 127
Questions of shape 134
A mischievous break: watch the label! 140
Small but mighty emulsions 141
Black gold 146
Nanoarchitecture 149
Kepler, Bernal, and your greengrocer 150
Colloidal crystals: ordered by entropy 154
Glasses and gels: when hate and love yield similar results 161
The world is not (just) a ball 165
Sandcastles and shifting sands 171
Dreamtime 175
Concludo, ergo sum 176
Proteins, a matter of molecular origami 183
Little chemists 192
Truck drivers and intelligence 197
Freemen of Flatland 202
Yard workers 207
Body builders 209
A (protein-rich) lunch break 214
Artificial respiration 216
The Chieftain and his Shaman 218
The secret of simplicity 218
Message in a bottle 220
Double helices and strategies to pull them apart 221
The great contortionist 222
The queen bee and her workers 225
From Gladstone Gander to Donald Duck 226
The factory of dreams 228
Inner secrets of the Chieftain 230
Time dust or stardust? 232
Back to the future 234
Weird words: soft matter from A to Z 237
Index of common things (or almost so) 287