The diverse world of liquid crystals

Abstract

Liquid crystals are all around us: in high-strength plastics, snail slime, laundry detergent, textile fibers such as silk and Kevlar, crude oil, insect wings, mineral slurries, lipstick, Bose-Einstein condensates, and the mantles of neutron stars. We eat them as aligned molecules in gluten and drink them as phospholipids in milk, where they stabilize fat globules. In our bodies they transport fats, make up cell membranes, and affect the functioning of hair cells in the inner ear, and even of DNA. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.