Questions tagged [polymers]
Polymers is concerned with the physical properties of individual macromolecules. For questions regarding bulk behavior of ensembles of polymers, the [condensed-matter] tag may be more appropriate.
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The entropic cost of tying knots in polymers
Imagine I take a polymer like polyethylene, of length $L$ with some number of Kuhn lengths $N$, and I tie into into a trefoil knot. What is the difference in entropy between this knotted polymer and ...
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Partition function for polymer chain
Supposing that I have linear chain with polymer of $N$ identical particles (interacting harmonically with adjacent particle) with position of first and last particle fixed, how do I find the partition ...
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Hindered rotation model for flexible polymers: deriving the Flory characteristic ratio
In the hindered rotation model we assumes constant bond angles $\theta$ and lengths $\ell$, with torsion angles between adjacent monomers being hindered by a potential $U(\phi_i)$. In Rubinstein's ...
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Force curve associated with squeezing a worm-like chain (WLC) between two parallel plates
Let's say I have a polymer, of contour length $L_p$ and persistence length $P$, positioned between two parallel plates separated by a distance $z$. I slowly squeeze the plates together until only two-...
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Molecular Dynamics Software for Coarse Grained Polymers
I am looking around for MD software that I can use to simulating polymers and I can't decide which software I should use.
I would like to simulate the swelling of crosslinked polymers, and I would ...
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Thermodynamics, chaperones: How to model polymer fragmentation?
Living polymers are well described by equilibrium statistical physics. Now I would like to consider a case were living polymers undergo fragmentation due to chaperones. I can think of a kinetic ...
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Reference Request - Modern Polymer Dynamics
I'm an applied math graduate student studying the cytoskeleton. I wanted to know of any reference(s) providing the most general mathematical theory of polymer dynamics, think an updated version of Doi ...
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Entropy of a polymer contained in a sphere with infinitely thin chords
Imagine that I have a polymer (approximated as a freely diffusing, freely jointed chain with some number of subunits 'N'), and I place this polymer into a sphere of some volume 'V'. Next, I proceed to ...
MorningCoffee1998
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Semiflexible discrete polymer chain
Suppose we have a 2D polymer model described by a set of 2D vectors {$\mathbf{t}_i$} ($i=1,2,\dots N$) of length $a$.
The energy of the polymer is given by:
$$
\mathcal{H}~=~-k\sum^N_{i=1}\mathbf{t}...
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Is a folded protein's conformation subject to thermal fluctuations?
In biology class we learn that proteins are folded, and that the shape the protein takes affects its bioactivity. Typically we don't go much further into protein shape from that, at least not at the ...
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Flory-Huggins ternary phase diagram with a neutral component
I am searching the literature for the Flory-Huggins phase diagram with the following components : polymer, solvent, and a third component that does not interact with the other components (just entropy ...
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Good references for specific heats
Does anyone know of a good reference for specific heats? It seems that it is no longer popular to publish values. I am especially interested in the specific heats of polymers.
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Entropic force in polymers
According to my textbook, the elastic force in a rubber is caused to the tendency of the polymers to return to their initial disordered state of higher entropy.
But isn't this looking at entropy on ...
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Exploring potential landscape with Monte Carlo
I am using a Monte Carlo approach for studying folding of a polymer chain. The polymer may fold in many configurations, corresponding to local potential minima, studying which is what interests me (i....
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Computing microstate probabilities based on Boltzmann distribution for chemical systems - Is it rigorous?
One approach to predicting the folded structure of a polymer (DNA, RNA, protein) is to compute the probability that any particular part of the polymer $x_i$ is "paired" with another part of the ...
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