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Wetting, Filling and Spilling: Interfacial Phase Transitions from the Microscopic to Macroscopic scale.

By: Andrew Parry
From: Imperial College London
At: Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar, B1-01
[2013-06-06] 11:30

NOTE: DIFFERENT ROOM!

In this talk I will review some recent developments involving fluids at interfaces. Such phenomena are ubiquitous in Nature eg. rain drops, droplets on surfaces, ink in pen capillaries and occasionally a nice morning glass of wine. Fluid interfaces exhibit some very interesting phase transitions in which the interfacial properties suddenly change. These are fascinating from the point of view of Statistical Mechanics and reveal the tremendously subtle interplay between surface tension, stochastic fluctuation effects, intermolecular forces and the confining geometry. We shall focus on three example of such transitions, some of which have proved to be highly controversial and difficult to understand. From them we will be able to see some unexpectedly deep connections between apparently different phenomena which stretch from the microscopic to macroscopic scale.