Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mphil-in-micro-and-nanotechnology-enterprise-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/paper-2/section-b/23b/iv/solution
Past exam of the MPhil in micro- and nanotechnology enterprise course of the University of Cambridge 2017 Paper 2 Section B 23B iv Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
Interpreting the nominal size as diameter , fluid viscous dominance requireswith in . The liquid density is not supplied, so the conventional fluid-Reynolds crossover is not numerically fixed. As an explicitly additional illustrative assumption, gives near ; ordinary much slower nanoparticle motion is well within the viscous regime.
If instead the supplied gold density is inserted into the dimensionless ratio , that ratio reaches one at . It is not the fluid Reynolds number. Including the spherical Stokes prefactor, the particle relaxation criterion occurs at . These quantify different inertia comparisons. The wording's speed direction is reversed: viscous dominance is obtained by making speed sufficiently small. If 10 nm denotes radius, the length-based thresholds halve.
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