Magical Smectic Liquid Crystal Tube: Simple Illustration of Mechanical, Optical and Magnetic Properties of Smectic Liquid Crystals

摘要

It is shown that aligned smectic liquid crystals, placed in centimeter-size cylindrical tubes, can be used to illustrate that smectic materials are fluid along the smectic layers and solid normal to them. We have also demonstrated and quantitatively measured the double refraction of the material, and obtained the birefringence. An advantage of this method compared with the Abbe refractometer is that the range of measurable refractive indices is not limited by the refractive index of the prism of the Abbe refractometer.