When matter is confined to the nanoscale, it behaves differently than bulk matter made of the same stuff. This is both the promise and the peril of nanoscience, which aims to model, explain, predict, understand, and synthesize nanoscale materials. Nanoscale materials interest scientists and engineers due to their unique, scale-dependent properties and behaviors, which arise as a result of the interactions between quantum and classical physics and chemistry at this scale of matter. The scale of nanomaterials is responsible for this unusual relationship between theories of matter. Unlike bulk materials, whose properties and behaviors are generally best predicted and explained by classical physics and chemistry, or molecule materials, whose properties are predicted by well-defined quantum and semi-classical theories, nanoscale materials lie between the quantum and the classical as neither fish nor fowl.
The interactions between quantum and classical physics and chemistry generate a host of practical and conceptual challenges to modeling nanomaterials, such as, Does one model the synthesis of a nanoparticle as the synthesis of a molecule or the growth of a crystal? How do surface models, which assume that surfaces constitute negligible proportions of the matter they enclose, apply to nanoscale systems? And, the question that will be central to this talk: how do models of alloy structure and behavior need to change to be appropriately applied to the nanoscale?
A recent research program investigating multiscale modeling in the philosophy of science studies how component models in a multiscale modeling system coordinate to produce scientific knowledge. This program offers insight into the nature of multiscale modeling, which can assist in solving some of the challenges faced in the modeling of nanoscale materials. After giving brief introductions to nanoscience and to the debates surrounding multiscale modeling in philosophy of science, I employ results from this research program to discuss how multiscale models of alloys need to adapt to accommodate nanoscale alloying.
This talk will be held on Zoom:
Link: https://uio.zoom.us/j/66963456050?pwd=RmJ5Vm1haVRCd3pBMkIraHJ2TWNBdz09
Meeting ID: 669 6345 6050
Passcode: 293556