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Nature Materials 7, 933–935 (1 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/nmat2324

Polymer dynamics: Floored by the rings

Tom McLeish

One of the most successful and satisfying fields of soft matter physics is that of entangled polymeric fluids. As important for industry as for fundamental physics, the extraordinary properties of 'elastic liquids', from polymer melts to the entangled 'wormlike micelles' found in some shampoos, arise from the topological interaction between molecules.