Soft Matter Physics
Summer Term 2014

This master module for both the German and the international physics studies program (IPSP) comprises 4 SWS lectures and 2 SWS exercises/seminars. The lectures will be held in English language. There will be lab courses in place of the regular lecture and seminar times.

Lectures

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Josef A. Käs & Prof. Dr. Claudia Mierke
Tuesdays, 15:15 – 16:45, SR218
Wednesdays, 13:30 – 15:00, SR218

Seminars

Tutor: Dr. Mareike Zink
Tuesdays, 13:30 – 15:00, SR218

Lab Course

Every student has to participate in three lab course experiments:

• Experiment 1: Brownian Motion and Molecular Diffusion
• Experiment 2: Bending Stiffness of Actin Filaments
• Experiment 3: Vesicle Fluctuation and Membrane Elasticity

Analysis of Experiment 3

For your protocol, analyze the data for the ten vesicles provided in this ZIP file. 

There is a "rho.txt" and a "phi4unwrap.txt" file in each vesicle folder. The vesicle contour is in polar coordinates with the center of the coordinate system set for each frame in the center of the vesicle (already drift corrected).
"rho.txt" has a column for each frame (ususally 500) and a row for each angle in phi4unwrap (from 0 to 2*pi), which contains the radius corresponding to the angle. The Matlab file contains the same data (rho.txt is DetEgde and phi4unwrap is phi4unwrap).

The vesicle of the first frame can be plotted for example in MatLab with:

polar(phi4unwrap',rho(:,1));

Hint for the analysis:
Use the Fourier-transformed fluctuations of the radii to determine bending elasticities kc for different modes separately.

You don't need the included images for the analysis. Feel free to play around with them and use them in your protocol nevertheless.

In case of questions, contact Erik W. Morawetz.