Soft Matter Physics of Microscopic Swimmers, Prof. Daisuke Takagi (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Thursday Nov 5, 2015, 3:15 PM → 5:15 PM Pacific/Honolulu

112 (Watanabe)

A relatively new area of soft matter physics is concerned with the properties of active matter, for instance a fluid filled with a collection of self-propelled particles. In such a system which is intrinsically out of equilibrium, rich collective behavior can emerge from simple physical interactions at the scale of individual particles. I will present intriguing movements of synthetic nanoparticles that swim like bacteria, as well as more recent work on the physics of a common zooplankton known as copepods. A mix of simple theories and experiments are used to elucidate the basic physical mechanisms at play. The findings have numerous potential applications ranging from fluid mixing in engineering devices to targeted drug delivery in medicine.

Slides daisuke_colloquium.pdf