Last Friday, Dr Joe Whitehead of Physics Dept. of USM gave us a very nice seminar on the characterization of liquid crystal and polymer dispersions.

At first, Dr Whitehead introduced the state of matter and related characteristic: 1. solid has position and orientational order, 2. gas and liquid have not position and orientational order.

Then Dr Whitehead presented the liquid crystal state and compared with that of solid.

Then Dr Whitehead introduced a typical liquid crystal molecule and nematic phase: molecules oriented with long axes approximated parallel.

Then Dr Whitehead presented the semantic A phase: 1. orientational order, 2. one dimension position order.

Then Dr Whitehead introduced the elastic deformation constants, escaped-radial configuration, planar polar configuration, etc.

Then Dr Whitehead presented the minimized equation, E-R configuration, minimized free energy with E-field, phase separation, PDLCs in micro-gravity etc.

At last Dr Whitehead introduced parabolic flights, terrestrial, electro-optic response.

Last Update: 4/10/98
Web Author: Zizhong Wang
The report is for Dr Paprzycki@ marcin.paprzycki@ibspan.waw.pl or@ Home Page