高分子やコロイド、エラストマー、ゲル、膜、ミセル、液晶、超分子、生体分子などのやわらかい物質を対象とし、物性物理学、化学、生物学の境界領域でこの30年の間に進展したソフトマター科学を取り上げます。その概要と内部構造を掘り下げ、ブラウン運動がいかにその根底の基本的原則に位置付けられるかを説明します。とろけるチーズや蜂蜜からヘア・コンディショナーまで「ソフトマター」に共通する物理的性質がそれらの力学的振舞いにどう影響するのか、またこれらの工業への応用について概説します。
   

• Introduces the still relatively young field of soft matter - the study of materials such as polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, and foams
• Examines the inner structure of these forms of matter and the shared physical properties and behaviours that emerge from that structure
• Shows how the field of soft matter brings together physics, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics
• Highlights the important industrial applications of soft matter

 
​Soft Matter science is concerned with soft materials such as polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, and foams, and has emerged as a rich interdisciplinary field over the last 30 years. Drawing on physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering, soft matter links fundamental scientific ideas to everyday phenomena. One such example is 'polymers', encountered in plastic materials and melted cheese, which illustrate how 'sliminess' emerges from the flow and form of giant molecules.
  
This Very Short Introduction delves into the field of soft matter, looking beneath the appearances of matter into its inner structure. Tom McLeish shows how Brownian Motion - the random local motion of molecules that gives rise to 'heat' - is an underlying principle of soft matter. From hair conditioner to honey, he discusses how the shared physical properties and characteristics of these materials influence the way they behave, and their industrial applications.