Condensed Matter Physics, Ch Soft matter: when entropy, not bonding, sets the structure
Problem
A student argues: “Entropy always favours disorder, so compressing a suspension of hard spheres should never make it crystallise, since a crystal is more ordered than a fluid.” Take a suspension compressed to ϕ=0.60. Find how far the disordered packing sits below its jamming limit of 0.64, and how far the crystal sits below its own limit of 0.7405, and use the comparison to say what is wrong with this argument.