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

(Lecture Notes)

Some related links

• DNA-Inspired Electrostatics, Gelbart et al, Physics Today 53, 38 (2000).
• Electrostatics in DNA-peptide complexes; from a course on Principles of Protein Structure
• Ten years of tension: single-molecule DNA mechanic; Bustamante, et al, Nature 421, 423 (2003).
• On DNA elasticity; Philip Nelson at UPenn
• The residual potential; Bruce Tidor at MIT