Discussion, oral presentations, problem solving, and reading of current literature pertinent to research interests of one or more faculty. Graduate students doing research in PSE.

Discussion, oral presentations, problem solving, and reading of current literature pertinent to research interests of one or more faculty. Graduate students doing research in PSE.

Discussion, oral presentations, problem solving, and reading of current literature pertinent to research interests of one or more faculty. Graduate students doing research in PSE.

Discussion, oral presentations, problem solving, and reading of current literature pertinent to research interests of one or more faculty. Graduate students doing research in PSE.

Discussion, oral presentations, problem solving, and reading of current literature pertinent to research interests of one or more faculty. Graduate students doing research in PSE.

Students write and defend a proposal for experimental investigation of a research problem not directly related to their thesis topic. Project selected requires approval of thesis committee, and involves primarily library research. Credit, 1.

This course examines the origins and consequences of interfacial interactions. Students will gain a qualitative perspective on various contributions to interfacial and small particle energies: Brownian, hydrodynamic, van der Waals, electrostatic interactions. At the same time students will develop quantitative tools to assess the magnitudes of these interactions. These fundamentals will be developed in basic form and then applied to nanoparticle stability, electrokinetic phenomena, nucleation, film stability, biomaterial interactions, and adhesion.

Review of classical and statistical ther-modynamics, configuration and conformation of isolated polymer chains, the rotational isomeric state model, thermody-namics and statistical mechanics of polymer solutions, scaling theory, single chain dynamics, scattering (light, x-ray, neutron).

Polymer structure, classification of polymerization reactions, theory and practice of step growth polymerization, radical polymerization, ionic polymerization, ring-opening polymerization, polymerization by transition metal catalysts.

Physical and mathematical principles required to understand and solve engineering problems encountered with polymeric materials. Vectors and tensor operations, stress-strain analysis in solids, fluid mechanics, transport equations for mass and energy, nonlinear physical properties, overview of polymer processing.