Talk:Soft matter

Categorization[edit]

Hello, I have created a wikipedia page for fracture of soft materials and I am including a sentence on the soft matter page to link it to fracture of soft materials. Please let me know if you have any comments. FernandaFontenele (talk) 17:05, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I removed redundant categories and moved the other to Category:Soft matter. There's no need for all of them to be here. Karol 18:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. I think there is need for them to be here. The categories provide information about the subject that otherswise could take up pages worth of text to write out. Bensaccount 21:28, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:CG and Wikipedia:Categorisation FAQ. Karol 02:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is really no need for this page to be in all those categories when Category:Soft matter is already in them. And Category:Physics is also uneccesary and redundant. Karol 09:49, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is not redundant. Most articles belong in both a category and its parent category. This allows them to be found in lists, and provides valuable information. btw, this is not the same page as Category:Soft matter (which is a category). Bensaccount 23:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My gosh... this is crazy. Have it your way, but Category:Physics is totally redundant too much a high-level category for this page. Look at the kind of pages placed in there. Karol 18:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobel prize in physics, 1991[edit]

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991 for his research on soft matter.

I removed the above from the article because it was unsourced and the source I found doesn't support the statement. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1991/index.html is the page I found, and it states "for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers." Now, this may be soft matter, but it doesn't sound like it to me, so I think a better source should be found. -FrankTobia (talk) 18:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article itself (along with its references) establishes liquid crystals and polymers as part of soft matter. But I improved the statement and added citations.Sanddune777 (talk) 00:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks :-). I think it's much better now: it's clear enough for me to understand the connection. -FrankTobia (talk) 21:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is all Soft Matter thermal?[edit]

It seems to me that the definition of soft matter in this article is flawed:

... physical states that are easily deformed by thermal stresses or thermal fluctuations.
— Soft matter

Must all soft matter be thermal? There is no citation for this, and it precludes most of what I know about some of the examples given in the very next sentence. For example, clicking on Granular material tells us that

The constituents that compose granular material must be large enough such that they are not subject to thermal motion fluctuations.
— Granular material

Much research is also done on polymer and biological systems in which the equilibrium state is not particularly affected by thermal fluctuations. Consider elasticity for example. Are thin elastic sheets such Human skin not soft matter? Another example listed at the end of this article is Active matter. Its article says that it is a subfield of soft matter, but it is the study of nonequilibrium systems whose deformations come from the propulsion of the particles themselves, not thermal energy.

I propose broadening the definition of soft matter to include the above examples, as well as those that I haven't thought of. askewchan (talk) 22:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Biophysics[edit]

Does exist a reference (press paper article) for the last sentence ? thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.231.138.41 (talk) 18:36, 1 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@138.231.138.41: The last chapter of the already cited text by R.A.L. Jones is dedicated to soft matter physics in biology. I'll add a supporting statement from said book. MaestroKuro (talk) 20:49, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting statement, but...[edit]

One possible roadblock to the development of biophysics as an established field is that soft condensed matter may be diverging into two distinct directions: a physical chemistry approach and a complex systems approach.

Interesting statement, but it's editorializing. 84.227.245.245 (talk) 15:06, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Food systems?[edit]

I do not see how that article describes an example of Soft matter. I removed the link to it.

Wiki Education assignment: Functional Nanomaterials[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 January 2023 and 7 March 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Koalatycontent (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Koalatycontent (talk) 19:07, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Current form and planned changes[edit]

The current form of the article does well in the introduction of soft matter by placing it in the field of condensed matter physics and giving some examples. However, the article is missing any historical aspect outside of the Nobel Prize in 1991, the Distinctive Physics section is somewhat brief and lacking distinctive structure, and the Applications and Research sections need to be significantly expanded to tie in with the introduction. The article would also benefit by having a section devoted to the physical characteristics of soft matter along with the methods used to categorize them, and the addition of figures. The citations and further reading are composed of older articles and textbooks, with most sources published before 2010 and nothing published after 2013. The article is also lacking sufficient referencing, with only four references for the article, containing only one primary source and one textbook.

To improve this article, I have amassed ~20 sources of review articles, perspectives, and textbooks to extend the history, applications, and research sections. I plan to reformat the Distinctive Physics section, create new sections related to different classes of soft matter, and include a section describing the physical characteristics. The article would also benefit from figures relating to the different classes of soft matter. - Koalatycontent (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]