Coarse-grained Description of Polymer Blends as Interacting Soft-Colloidal Particles

We present a theoretical approach which maps polymer blends onto mixtures of soft-colloidal particles. The analytical mesoscale pair distribution functions reproduce well data from united atom molecular dynamics simulations of polyolefin mixtures without fitting parameters. The theory exactly recovers the analytical expressions for density and concentration fluctuation structure factors of soft colloidal mixtures (liquid alloys).Comment: 27 REVTex4 pages, 8 PostScript figures, 1 table accepted for publication in Journal of Chemical Physic

Collection Project Completed

I hope everyone had an awesome Spring Break and is enjoying the short burst of nice weather! It’s been a long time since my last post because I have been working on a month-long project, and I wanted to wait until it was complete to give the whole scoop. Due to my interest in any and everything that has to do with the euphonium, I did a great deal of research in an effort to improve and expand upon the large collection of musical resources that the Musselman Library has to offer. [excerpt

Another Project Underway

I have embarked on another researching journey; this time focusing on “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band. Ever since I got to see them perform at a neighboring high school my freshmen year, I been fascinated and inspired by the level of excellence and precision that the Marine Band displays. One day I hope to join their ranks as part of the euphonium section, but I still have a lot of work and practicing to do before I can achieve this goal. [excerpt

Just Keep Plugging Away

I am not the greatest technology user, but I am in the process of creating a page on the library’s resource guide that will include resources, links to resources, and links to links to resources about pretty much anything anyone might ever want to know about the President’s Own Marine Band. It will include audio resources, as well as links to more audio resources. It will include links to notable and informative websites that will show you super cool pictures of various aspects of the Marine Band, as well as its musicians and directors, past and present. It will even include links to resources that the library has about the Marine Band, such as informative books that you can actually read. [excerpt

Site-averaging in the integral equation theory of interaction site models of macromolecular fluids: An exact approach

A simple "trick" is proposed, which allows to perform exactly the site-averaging procedure required when developing integral equation theories of interaction site models of macromolecular fluids. It shows that no approximation is involved when the number of Ornstein-Zernike equations coupling the site-site correlation functions is reduced to one. Its potential practical interest for future theoretical developments is illustrated with a rederivation of the so-called molecular closures.Comment: 2 pages, revTeX

Mode-coupling theory for structural and conformational dynamics of polymer melts

A mode-coupling theory for dense polymeric systems is developed which unifyingly incorporates the segmental cage effect relevant for structural slowing down and polymer chain conformational degrees of freedom. An ideal glass transition of polymer melts is predicted which becomes molecular-weight independent for large molecules. The theory provides a microscopic justification for the use of the Rouse theory in polymer melts, and the results for Rouse-mode correlators and mean-squared displacements are in good agreement with computer simulation results.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett. in pres

Orbits in the H2O molecule

We study the forms of the orbits in a symmetric configuration of a realistic model of the H2O molecule with particular emphasis on the periodic orbits. We use an appropriate Poincar\'e surface of section (PSS) and study the distribution of the orbits on this PSS for various energies. We find both ordered and chaotic orbits. The proportion of ordered orbits is almost 100% for small energies, but decreases abruptly beyond a critical energy. When the energy exceeds the escape energy there are still non-escaping orbits around stable periodic orbits. We study in detail the forms of the various periodic orbits, and their connections, by providing appropriate stability and bifurcation diagrams.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in CHAO

Fortenbaugh Music Intern, First Post of the Semester

As the Fortenbaugh Music Library Intern, I will be working on several projects throughout the semester. I plan to use the skills that I acquire during this internship when I am a band director, and need to know how to catalog and easily access music. Currently, I am researching euphonium repertoire (both audio recordings and physical sheet music) to potentially add to the large collection of scores and CDs already in the Musselman Music Library. [excerpt