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| Hanging out with colloids |
| What do beer, shaving foam, and fog have in common? They’re all colloids. Colloids are fluids that contain particles which ‘hang about’. The colloid’s particles will not settle, no matter how long you leave them standing. Milk is an example of a colloid: it’s a mixture of butterfat particles dispersed in water. Even if you leave a glass of milk for days on end, these particles won’t settle (that’s why you don’t need to shake milk before you drink it). Colloids are applied from pregnancy tests and paper making, to coal mining and salad dressing. The mysterious properties of colloids open up an entire branch of colloid science. In 1992, Professors Toyoki Kunitake (Kyushu University, Japan), Tom Healy (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Neil Furlong (RMIT University, Australia) realised the importance of international collaboration in furthering their work with colloids, and the Australia-Japan Symposium of Colloid and Surface Science was born. The symposium was integrated in the division activities of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, and the Chemical Society of Japan in 2003 and now gathers more than 100 scientists to share their results and ideas. ‘In 2004, we had the second successful symposium of this type in Japan’, says Professor Kazue Kurihara, of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials of Tohoku University, Sendai Japan. ‘The symposium is like a showcase of the science of two countries,’ she says. ‘It has promoted the science in both sides, especially through collaboration and discussion, and also has brought many friendships between scientists in both countries’. Contact in Australia: The Colloid and Surface Science Division, The Royal Australian Chemical Institute (Attn: Dr. Vince Craig, Australian National University, ACT) Email: vince.craig@anu.edu.au Website: http://www.chem.usyd.edu.au/˜warr_g/raci/ Website: http://www.raci.org.au/ Contact in Japan: The Colloid and Surface Chemistry Division, The Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) (Attn: Prof. Kazue Kurihara,Tohoku University, Sendai) Email: dcsc@chemistry.or.jp Website: http://langmuir.chem.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/colloid/ Website: http://www.chemistry.or.jp/ |
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