“Interfacial and Surface forces, drops and flows”

David Tabor, who coined the term tribology, showed that the lateral force required to

slide two surfaces against each other (‘‘friction’’ force) is in fact proportional to the contact area. The Amonton law, it was then realized, is a special case in which the contact area of a rough surface happens to increase linearly with the load. In this talk, we present a system in which the lateral force decreases with the normal force in spite of the fact that the contact area increases. This happens for drops on surfaces. We will review recent advances in wetting phenomena and associated modern experimental systems. About the speaker

Dr. Rafael Tadmor earned his B.Sc. (1992) and M.Sc. (1994) in Chemical Engineering from the Technion (Israel) and his Ph.D. (2000) from the department of Materials and Interfaces, at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). He then moved to UC Santa Barbara where he was a post doc with Prof. Jacob Israelachvili at the department of Chemical Engineering, following which he joined (2003) the department of Chemical Engineering (now the Dan F. Smith Department of Chemical Engineering) at Lamar University as an Assistant Professor. Since 2009 he has been an Associate Professor there. Rafael’s research interests include wetting phenomena, surface forces, and intermolecular forces. He won a number of awards and recognitions throughout his career. Most recent include: in 2009 PRL paper (103, 266101) was recommended for reading across disciplines by the PRL editorial; in 2010 he won the Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award of Lamar University (the first time (and so far the only time) that an engineering professor receives this award); in 2012 he won the University Scholar award (Lamar University).

Rafael Tadmor

Department of Chemical Engineering

Lamar University

Light refreshments provided

Friday, March 1st, 2013 2:00 – 3:00 PM

Lindy Boggs Room 243