A phase diagram in a jar
One of the things I love about colloids is just how visual they are. Be it watching them jiggling around under a confocal microscope, or the beautiful TEM images of crystal structures, I always find them quite inspirational, or at least instructional, for better understanding statistical mechanics.
Sedimentation Just to prove I’m on the cutting edge of science, I recently discovered another neat example from 1993. At the liquid matter conference in Vienna Roberto Piazza gave a talk titled “The unbearable heaviness of colloids”. As a side note there was a distinct lack of playful titles, maybe people were too nervous at such a big meeting.