Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge / 2008 / Section A / A1

For complete wetting, the meniscus has curvature radius equal to the capillary radius $r=d/2$. The Young–Laplace equation gives the supporting pressure difference $\Delta p=2\gamma /r=4\gamma /d$. Balance it against the hydrostatic pressure $\rho gh$. Taking the sap's mass density to be water-like, $\rho \simeq 10^3\mathrm{kg}{\mathrm{m}}^{-3}$, givesThis is the height supported by the stipulated capillary-pressure model. The density assumption is needed because the surface tension and capillary diameter alone do not determine a height.

For the symmetric regular solution model, the dimensionless mixing free energy is $f/(k_{B}T)=\varphi \log \varphi +(1-\varphi )\log (1-\varphi )+\chi \varphi (1-\varphi )$. At the thermodynamic critical point, its second and third derivatives in composition vanish. The third derivative gives ${\varphi }_c=1/2$; the second then gives $4-2{\chi }_c=0$. ThereforeThis uses the equal-size, composition-symmetric mixture model.

The mean interface height fluctuation is zero; its root mean square roughness is obtained by summing the mode variances. Replacing the two-dimensional wavevector sum by its continuum density gives the thermal roughness of a tension-dominated interface:Take $q_{\min }=2\pi /L$ with $L=\sqrt{A}=10^{-2}\mathrm{m}$, and $q_{\max }=2\pi /d$ with $d=2\times 10^{-10}\mathrm{m}$. At $T=300\mathrm{K}$,The logarithm makes the answer only weakly sensitive to order-one choices of cutoff. Gravity has been omitted as stipulated; the fixed mean height removes the zero wavevector mode.