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Sunday, January 04, 2026

Updated: CM/nano primer - 2026 edition

This is a compilation of posts related to some basic concepts of the physics of materials and nanoscale physics.  I realized the other day that I hadn't updated this since 2019, and therefore a substantial audience may not have seen these.  Wikipedia's physics entries have improved greatly over the years, but hopefully these are a complement that's useful to students and maybe some science writers.  Please let me know if there are other topics that you think would be important to include.  

What is temperature?
What is chemical potential?
What is mass?
Fundamental units and condensed matter

What are quasiparticles?
Quasiparticles and what is "real"
What is effective mass?
What is a phonon?
What is a plasmon?
What are magnons?
What are skyrmions?
What are excitons?
What is quantum coherence?
What are universal conductance fluctuations?
What is a quantum point contact?  What is quantized conductance?
What is tunneling?

What are steric interactions?
(effectively) What is the normal force?
What is disorder, to condensed matter physicists?
What is band theory?
What is a "valley"? 
What are quantum oscillations?
What is a metal?
What is a bad metal?  What is a strange metal?
What is a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid?

What is a crystal?

1 comment:

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

A few other faves of mine that you didn’t mention: neuromorphic computing, quasicrystals, physics of vision, stat mech of money, physics of tofu frying, why soft matter is hard, why hard matter can be soft, and of course, the flexural rigidity of pizza.