Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-soft-condensed-matter-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/section-b/6/d/solution
Past exam of the soft condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2021 Section B 6 d Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
For , the critical polymer volume fraction isIf is the volume assigned to one amino acid in the lattice model, the critical number densities are exactlyThe extra physical approximation needed to use the given radius of gyration is that a chain in a poor solvent is a compact polymer globule. Its size then scales as with , so . This gives the standard scaling estimatesWith , numerical substitution givesUsing only the leading large- value gives and , respectively. These are scaling estimates, not geometrically exact densities.
For comparison, a specifically uniform spherical compact protein has the radius of gyration of a uniform sphere, , so its physical volume is . Taking instead gives and . The factor between these conventions is geometric. The PDF does not give a monomer volume, globule density or shape model, and a radius of gyration alone does not determine an exact molecular volume. The model-independent conclusions are the formulas in terms of and the 300:1 ratio of monomer to protein number density.
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