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Brownian motion is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas). [2] This motion pattern typically consists of random fluctuations in a particle's position inside a fluid sub-domain, followed by a relocation to another sub-domain. Each relocation is followed by more fluctuations within the new closed volume.
Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as solid-state chemistry, quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the large-scale properties of solid materials result from their atomic-scale ...
A solid is a material that can support a substantial amount of shearing force over a given time scale during a natural or industrial process or action. This is what distinguishes solids from fluids, because fluids also support normal forces which are those forces that are directed perpendicular to the material plane across from which they act and normal stress is the normal force per unit area ...
In addition to the classification by particle size, dispersions can also be labeled by the combination of the dispersed phase and the medium phase that the particles are suspended in. Aerosols are liquids dispersed in a gas, sols are solids in liquids, emulsions are liquids dispersed in liquids (more specifically a dispersion of two immiscible ...
Tracer diffusion describes the motion of individual adparticles on a surface at relatively low coverage levels. At these low levels (< 0.01 monolayer), particle interaction is low and each particle can be considered to move independently of the others. The single atom diffusing in figure 1 is a nice example of tracer diffusion.
Schematic illustrating diffusiophoretic motion of a colloidal particle (blue) in a concentration gradient of a solute (red). Note that there is also a concentration gradient of the solvent (green). The particle is moving a diffusiophoretic velocity v dp {\displaystyle {\bf {v}}_{\text{dp}}} , in a fluid that is stationary far from the particle.
A molecular dynamics simulation requires the definition of a potential function, or a description of the terms by which the particles in the simulation will interact. In chemistry and biology this is usually referred to as a force field and in materials physics as an interatomic potential.
The current understanding of soft matter grew from Albert Einstein's work on Brownian motion, [5] [6] understanding that a particle suspended in a fluid must have a similar thermal energy to the fluid itself (of order of kT). This work built on established research into systems that would now be considered colloids. [7]