# Ionic Interactions

1. Ionic solutions:
   - Why do electrolytes dissociate (ionize) in water?
   - The bare Coulomb interaction and the Bjerrum length
   - Acids, bases, and salts
   - The importance of Coulomb repulsion in biological systems
   - Macroions, counterions, salt ions
   - Restricted partition function
2. Statistical treatments of ionic solutions:
   - 'Mean-field' potential and charge density via the self-consistent Poisson-Boltzmann equation
   - Screening in salt solutions
     - Linearized Poisson-Boltzman
     - Debye-Hückel theory
   - Dissociation from a charged membrane
     - Solution of the 1d equation
     - The Gouy-Chapman layer
   - Interaction between charged parallel plates
   - Importance of fluctuations; like charges can attract

## Some Related Links

- Gelbart, et al. DNA-Inspired Electrostatics. Physics Today 53, no. 9 (2000): 38.
- Electrostatics in DNA-peptide complexes; from a course on Principles of Protein Structure.
- Bustamante, et al. Ten Years of Tension: Single-molecule DNA Mechanic. Nature 421 (2003): 423–7.
- On Electrostatic Screening; John Marko at Northwestern.
- On DNA elasticity; Philip Nelson at UPenn.
- The residual potential; Bruce Tidor at MIT.

(Detailed Lecture Notes (PDF))