Transport Properties in Concentrated Colloidal Suspensions.

摘要

The branch of physics which deals with macroscopic phenomena from a microscopic or molecular point of view is known as statistical mechanics. Its goal is to understand and predict macroscopic phenomena and to calculate macroscopic properties, such as the transport coefficients of simple fluids, mixtures and colloidal suspension, from microscopic processes and the microscopic properties of the individual molecules. In an ideal situation statistical mechanics can be used to help predict and calculate macroscopic properties once all the microscopic quantities are known, by constructing and integrating the equations of motion of the system. However, up until now it would appear that only in the case of a few systems it has proved possible to exactly calculate macroscopic phenomena in terms of microscopic properties. For concentrated colloidal suspensions that construction and integration of the equations of motion is not only impractical, but also impossible, because even if it were possible to solve all these equations in general, it would take an impossible amount of time to even calculate one solution with a given set of initial conditions.