NBIA Colloquium via Zoom by Daan Frenkel, Cambridge

We would like to invite you to this week’s (Zoom) Colloquium on

                          Friday, March 5 at 3:15 PM

Speaker: Daan Frenkel (Cambridge)

Title: Counting the Uncountable: Entropy, granular Entropy and Information

Abstract: In an attempt to construct a Statistical Mechanics of Powders, Sir Sam Edwards introduced the concept of "granular entropy", defined as the logarithm of the number of distinct packings of N granular particles in a fixed volume V. In 1989, the proposal was rather controversial but much of the debate was sterile because the granular entropy could not even be computed for systems as small as 20 particles - hardly a good approximation of the thermodynamic limit.

In my talk I will describe how granular entropies of much larger systems can now be computed, using a novel algorithm. Interestingly, it turns out the definition of granular entropy will have to be modified to guarantee that granular entropy is extensive. Which brings us back to the Gibbs paradox and a dirty secret of colloid science.  

Bio: Daan Frenkel (1948) received his PhD in experimental Physical Chemistry from the University of Amsterdam (NL). Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate in Chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles. After that, he worked at Shell Research (Amsterdam), the Universities of Utrecht and Amsterdam and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam.  In 2007, he was appointed to the 1968 Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge (UK). He retired in 2018, but remain research active.

His research focuses on numerical simulations of many-body systems, with a special emphasis on problems relating to ordering and self-assembly. 

To participate on Friday, click on

https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/61333932427 

The colloquium will be moderated by Poul Henrik Damgaard and we strongly encourage you to participate actively by asking questions during the talk. Poul Henrik will briefly remind you how this can be done just before the colloquium starts.