Condensed matter physics is about how order emerges from disorder

The order of thingsLife and the world around us sometimes appears chaotic and random. We may feel this way about traffic, weather, economics, social change, politics, or our personal relationships. Perhaps that is why many yearn for regularity, predictability, order, and stability. Science is a search for patterns and order in the natural world. Condensed matter physics is about how order emerges from disorder.This chapter explores how different states of matter are associated with different types of ordering of the atoms in the material. The symmetry of the state reflects the type of ordering, i.e., the patterns associated with the state. There is also a rigidity associated with the ordering and the rigidity determines the nature of the deviations from perfect ordering and results in entities such as vortices that are central to the physical properties of the state of matter.The association of a state of matter with a specific type of ordering is illustrated in Figure 15 by an…