Polysaccharides - materials made by nature.

(talk by Anton Huber, notes by AdC)

Polysaccharides make up most of the biological substance of plant cells. Their molecular geometries and symmetries determine the physical properties of plant-based materials. Even materials from trees of the same kind have different properties because of the environment; so understanding the properties of a given sample is of crucial importance to Material Scientists.

A typical question: Are the 4 datasets (which should be the same) different?

In Aqueous Media, Supermolecular Structures form, and very few of these molecules structurize lots of water! Water Clusters can be several millimeters large! By comparison, the individual molecules are nanometers -> 6 orders of magnitude difference!

In a given measurement setup the materials are physically sorted by fraction: on the left is materials with big molecules (high mol numbers), one the right is small ones.

1. bins of sizes/weights is conventionally considered sufficiently precise for classification, both in industry and science.

The data for this session are analysis data of 4 samples of plant materials: beech, birch, oat and rice. 3 measurements have been taken, along with their indexing axes: chan1 is index of the measurement at chan2, chan3 is index of chan4, and chan5 is index of chan6.

Chan1&2 contain the measured delta-refraction index of electromagnetic radiation aimed at the material sample; i.e. how much is light of a given wavelength diverted from its direction by the size-ordered regions along the sample? [exact wavelength was not given.]

Chan3&4 contain the measured fluorescence index under electromagnetic radiation, again dependent on the size-ordered regions along the sample.

Chan5&6 contain the measured dispersion of the material sample under light, i.e. how much does the dispersion vary from clear water, based on molecule size along the size-ordered axis of the sample?