PHY-417/617: Soft Condensed Matter

Assignment 1 Due on 10-9-2013 (in the class) Penalty for late submission : -10 marks/day 1. Consider a solid with a simple cubic structure, for which the interatomic potential U (r) is written U (r ) = B A m n r r

Having rst derived expressions for the equilibrium separation a and the energy at equilibrium , derive an expression for the Youngs modulus in terms of the bond energy and the equilibrium separation a. Assume that when a tensile stress is applied, the interatomic separations in directions perpendicular to the stress remain unchanged. [10] 2. For each of the following particles, suspended in water, (a) a grain of sand, 100 m in diameter, density 2200 kg m3 , (b) a polymer particle, 1 m in diameter, density 1050 kg m3 , (c) a virus particle, 50 nm in diameter, density 1020 kg m3 , (i) calculate the terminal velocity, (ii) calculate the dision coecient, (iii) estimate the time taken for the particle to diuse a distance equal to its own diameter. [Data: viscosity of water = 1.002 103 Pas; density of water = 1000 kg m3 .]

[10]

3. Consider a colloid of charged spheres of radius 0.1 m in an aqueous solution of sodium chloride. (a) Calculate the Debye screening length for salt concentrations of 105 , 104 , 103 and 102 mol/dm3 . (b) For each of the salt concentrations above, estimate the volume fraction for the transition to an ordered phase. You may assume that the particles may be considered to behave as hard spheres with an eective radius equal to the sum of the physical radius and the Debye screening length. [10] 4. A water based varnish is composed of a dispersion of polymer spheres with diameters of 200 nm. if it is brushed onto a surface as a lm of thickness 200 m, how fast must the brush be moved to achieve an appreciable degree of shear thinning? [10] 5. The table below gives the temperature dependence of the viscosity of water, whose latent heat of vaporisation is 226 104 J kg1 .

(a) Use this data to test the following relation for the viscosity of a liquid. = G0 exp kB T

(b) Assuming that the instantaneous shear modulus of water, G0 , is comparable to the shear modulus of ice at 0 C, 2.5 109 Pa, estimate the characteristic frequency of vibration for water. [10]