1. Workshop on Amorphous Solids, Hong Kong, September 2008 Lecture 1: Introduction to glasses Itamar Procaccia Institute of Theoretical Physics Chinese University of Hong Kong

2. Glasses: disordered materials that lack the periodicity of crystals but behave mechanically like solids. Created by cooling a liquid “fast enough” to avoid crystallization. (Known for millennia). The glassy state is ubiquitous in nature. (Obsidian, window glass, fiber optics, plastics, metallic glasses and alloys, etc. etc.) Our aim is to understand the molecular processes by which liquids acquire amorphous rigidity. We will try to understand simple models in great detail.

3. Typical phase diagram: Some experimental examples

4. The TTT-diagram

6. Slowing down The stretched exponential approximation: The Vogel-Fulcher fit

8. Experimental methods Broad Band Dielectric Spectroscopy (BDS)

9. A nice riddle:

10. Specific heat spectroscopy

11. The energy landscape picture

13. Mechanical Properties Monte Carlo: