“The essential property of insoluble bilayers is that they optimise the...” — Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Quote

The essential property of insoluble bilayers is that they optimise their area at fixed surfactant number.

Benjamin Franklin performed a beautiful experiment using surfactants: on a pond at Clapham Common, he poured a small amount of oleic acid, a natural surfactant which tends to form a dense film at the water-air interface.

What do we mean by soft matter? Americans prefer to call it 'complex fluids.' This is a rather ugly name, which tends to discourage the young students.

Usually a fiber, after being dipped in a liquid, shows a string of droplets, and thus, for some time, people thought that most common fibers were non-wettable.

I already have a second career, running a property investment business with a friend.

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically.

I am a public figure, but I am not public property.

I'm public property, the public put me where I am. They own me.

That is life for a Saudi woman: wherever we go, whatever we achieve, we are the property of a man.