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Other Edinburgh events

Liquid Crystals: The strange middle child of condensed matter physics

Please note that this event will take place on the first floor; the venue is accessible via a lift. Please speak to a member of staff on arrival to gain access to the lift. Over 18
Past event - 2022
11 May Doors 7pm
Event 7.30pm to 9.10pm
The Three Sisters Bar, 139 Cowgate,
Edinburgh EH1 1JS
Liquid crystals are everywhere nowadays. But what are they actually? Neither liquid nor solid, these materials have a range of exciting and weird properties. In this evening's talks we learn all about liquid crystals - a state of matter that exists somewhere between a solid and a liquid.

The blue fog and other strange phenomena

Dr. Davide Marenduzzo (Personal Chair in Computational Biophysics)
What are scientists doing in liquid crystal research these days? First, we'll talk about the "blue fog''. This was the first ever liquid crystal to be documented experimentally by an Austrian botanist at the end of the 19th century. Yet, working out its structure and properties has been keeping physicists busy ever since. Then, we'll move to biology and observe a growing bacterial colony on the microscope. Surprisingly, the features governing its behaviour are all dictated by liquid crystal physics, and its "defects" are very much alike those which we can see on the tip of our finger.

Behind the screen: The tangled science of crystals that flow

Dr. Tyler Schrendurk (Reader in Theoretical/Computational Condensed Matter Physics)
We all know the three states of matter from school: solids, liquids and gases (and plasmas too, if your teacher was a bit cheeky). But for over a 100 years, we’ve known about materials that don’t fit into those categories; phases of matter that sit in the borderlands between the classic states. Liquid crystals e.g.— they’re not mixtures of a liquid and solid particles, but rather pure flowing fluids that also have solid-like crystallinity. In our digital world, these are everywhere. With a pint in hand, I'm going to tell you some of the weird and wonderful things I've learned about them.
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