SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR

                   Friday, November 18, 2002
11:30 a.m., Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building
         Refreshments served in Room 1400A at 11:15 a.m.


Title:     Order on Curved Surfaces:
           Viruses, Vesicles and Multi-electron Bubbles

Speaker:   Mark Bowick
           Syracuse University

Abstract:
Dense spherical particles an a flat surface usually pack into a simple
triangular lattice.   The minimum energy configuration for repulsively
interacting particles on the curved surface of a sphere, however, is a
long-standing physical and mathematical problem dating back at least to
J.J. Thomson in 1904.  Relevant applications include the protein capsids
of viruses,  vesicles below the melting point,  multi-electron Helium
bubbles and self-assembled colloids on liquid-liquid interfaces.  I will
discuss the universal proliferation of novel defect arrays ("scars") in
the ground state of such "spherical crystals" for sufficiently large
systems including experimental results for the colloidal problem.