U-M ChE faculty and graduate students are especially encouraged to attend.

A reception with light refreshments will be held in the B32 lobby from 11-11:30 a.m.

Seminar Abstract: "Sticky liquids make soft solids"
This talk will describe observations of unexpected interactions among fluids of different sorts that can result in new soft solid materials. It will also describe new measurement methods that enable the study of these phenomena. The observations include water-in-oil emulsions that remain stable in the absence of any surfactant whatsoever, phase separation of proteins that result in liquid and gel drops and the observation that biopolymer gel networks in living cells have all the hallmarks of worm-like micelles, and network structure widely studied in surfactant and diblock copolymers systems.

About the Weitz Lab:
We study the physics of soft condensed matter, materials which are easily deformable by external stresses, electric or magnetic fields, or even by thermal fluctuations. These materials typically possess structures which are much larger than atomic or molecular scales; the structure and dynamics at mesoscopic scales determine the physical properties of these materials. The goal of our research is to probe and understand this relationship. We study both synthetic and biological materials; our interests extend from fundamental physics to technological applications, from basic materials questions to specific biological problems. The techniques we use include light scattering, optical microscopy, rheology, and microfluidics.