9322301 Garg This REU Site award provides an opportunity for eight undergraduate students to work with four faculty members in the Physics Department during a ten week summer period in theoretical and experimental condensed matter physics. Research projects to be undertaken include: Chaos in polymer dispersed liquid crystals; critical phenomena in binary fluid mixtures; spatiotemporal chaos; and thermodynamic studies of monolayer phase diagrams. %%% The goals of this program are to guide students in the process and methodology of research, and to train the novice research student into becoming an independent thinker. At the start of the summer, students will be assigned a research project, and will work in close collaboration on a daily basis with an individual faculty member. They will learn research techniques, report progress during weekly seminars, and be given an opportunity of attending a regional and/or national meeting of the American Physical Society and Conferences on Undergraduate Research. Some students will present research findings in the same sessions as leading scientists. Students will be recruited from the College of Wooster and other institutions in the geographical area. Emphasis will be place on increasing the participation of historically underrepresented groups in the sciences. ***
