The Music of the Quantum

Soft Matter

As we go up the ladder from the quantum world, to our everyday world, we need to understand new types of matter. "Soft matter" is used to describe the new types of matter of lower density that we find in our world, such as granular matter like sand, fluids, proteins and polymer matter. There are new challenges and new principles that confront us in trying to understand emergence in these materials, for example - the physics of avalanches, the physics of fluid flow. For some, soft matter is seen as the vital bridge that will ultimately link physics and biology together.