Soft Matter: The stuff that dreams are made of [Paperback]

Roberto Piazza says: Physics should be made simple enough to be amusing, but not so trivial as to spoil the fun. This is exactly the approach of this book in making the science of soft matter relevant to everyday life things such as the food we eat, the plastic we use, the concrete we build with, the cells we are made of.

Foreword
Preface to the English edition
1 Overture: a special day
2 A life in suspense
2.1 A big cast of little characters? 2.2 When it pays to be superficial? 2.3 Colloidal Waterage, an award-winning firm? 2.4 Rock and roll in suspense ?2.5 Osmosis, the breath of a dispersed world ?2.6 Colloidal Lego, matter made to measure ?2.7 Softness without limit: fractal aggregates ?2.8 Concrete: united by charge? 2.9 Particles spreading waves: colloidal light and colors? 2.10 A very particular particulate ink ?2.11 Flying colloids: deceptive beauty of the aerosols
3 Freedom in chains
3.1 Long and disordered queues? 3.2 A tale of cross-links and double-crosses 3.3 Necklaces for all tastes? 3.4 Plastics: false solids with a biddable disposition? 3.5 Snake dance? 3.6 Entropy: disorder or freedom? ?3.7 Elastic by chance ?3.8 The secret of Mister Fantastic ?3.9 Panta rei? 3.10 Nightmares for Indiana Jones? 3.11 Charged polymers: polyelectrolytes
4 Double-faced Janus molecules
4.1 Striding on water: the physics of Jesus bugs? 4.2 Surfactants, a split personality? 4.3 Soap bubbles: a paradise for kids and math nerds? 4.4 Micelles, when surfactants find peace? 4.5 As white as can be: the science of cleaning? 4.6 A large and varied faml3ã