Soft Matter

What it's about:

What relates car tires to soap bubbles to spaghetti? To some extend, they can behave as a solid or as a liquid, depending on how you interact with them.

Soft matter has been used for centuries already, but it is Pierre Gilles Degennes who theorized its complex behavior due to mechanic or thermal changes.

Pierre Gilles Degennes

Pierre Gilles Degennes, born in 1932 and home schooled until the age of 12, had already adopted adult habits of reading and going to museums by 13. After studying at the École Normale Supérieur he became a research engineer working mostly on magnetism and neutron scattering.

His work on liquid crystals started in 1968, where he made groundbreaking research about soft matter, earning him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991. He was then director of the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI), a post he held from 1976 until his retirement in 2002 Pierre Gilles Degennes died in 2007.

Where?

Discovery Description:

Pierre Gilles Degennes developed many concepts to explain soft matter, inspired by theories and behaviors known in solid state and statistical physics, for example “reptation”.

Soft matter is found in all materials consisting of strings of molecules, intertwined together. When hit fast, the long strings do not have time to move: it acts as a solid. When slowly interacting with it, the strings will flow out of the way: it acts as a fluid.

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