4 ms·
And what is "soft matter"?
by yosito 5y ago
And what is "soft matter"?
- abledon 5y agofrom article.... "Materials can be broadly classified as hard or soft matter. Hard materials, like metal alloys and ceramics, generally have a very regular and symmetric arrangement of atoms. Further, in hard matter, ordered groups of atoms arrange themselves into nanoscopic building blocks, called unit cells. Typically, these unit cells are comprised of only a few atoms and stack together to form the periodic crystal. Soft matter can also form crystals consisting of unit cells, but now the periodic pattern is not at the atomic level; it occurs at a much larger scale from assemblies of large molecules."
- jtbayly 5y agoApparently swans are. I’d guess most birds, especially geese, since their feathers make nice pillows.
- wernercd 5y agoThis has nothing to do with black swans, the birds... this has to do with unexpected results that are easy to explain in hindsight after the truth is known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory "Taleb's "black swan theory" refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.[2]:xxi" This discovery (unexpected behavior of matter) seems like it'll have a surprising and large magnitude.
- meepmorp 5y agoThe way they use the phrase here has nothing to do with Black swan theory or Taleb's book. It just means something very rare, and that's been the common meaning of the phrase in English for hundreds of years. It comes from Latin.
- jtbayly 5y agoBut no correction of my improper interpretation of “soft matter”? ;-)
- wernercd 5y agoits early and the caffeine hasn't set in (still hasn't). I guess this is a better comment if I read it with a sarcastic twist?
- Cd00d 5y agoMatter is stuff. Condensed matter is stuff that is not gas. Soft matter is shorthand for soft condensed matter, which is stuff that is not gas nor solid. Fluidics, liquid crystals, polymers are examples of soft matter. Source: I am a soft matter physics PhD that focused on liquid crystal phase characterization.
- dmingod666 5y agoThe article seems is too shallow in details of their seemingly very important discovery. Atleast nothing I could decipher. What do you think is relevant in their finding?