SOMEX

Soft matter is the generic term for a large class of materials including foams, emulsions, colloids, polymers, complex plasmas, granular media, gels or pastes. These materials have in common that they are "soft", i.e. they flow on easily observable time scales (in contrast to the microscopic relaxation in gases and liquids and the geological time scales of flowing solids). These materials also have in common that they consist of building blocks such as bubbles, droplets, macromolecules, particles, etc., whose sizes lie between the microscopic world of molecules and the macroscopic world. Both together, mesoscopic time scales and mesoscopic length scales, have led to a common set of optical investigation methods based on optical microscopy and light scattering to study structure and dynamics in soft matter. A third common feature of soft matter is that it is strongly affected in microgravity, which is due to its softness. In ground-based experiments, there is sedimentation of particles, leakage of solvents or inhomogeneity in general. The SOMEX rocket module is an experimental platform for optics-based experiments on soft matter in microgravity. It provides the instrumental requirements for optical experiments, such as light sources, detectors, cameras and computing capacities, together with a flexible installation space for experiments. This enables experiments to be carried out quickly, components to be reused and the module itself to be continuously developed and improved. The rocket module has been used to conduct experiments in microgravity with dilute granular media and with artificial microswimmers. An experiment with nanoparticles is currently under development.