Pierre-Gilles de Gennes quotes:

Benjamin Franklin performed a beautiful experiment using surfactants: on a pond at Clapham Common, he poured a small amount of oleic acid, a natural surfactant which tends to form a dense film at the water-air interface.

What do we mean by soft matter? Americans prefer to call it 'complex fluids.' This is a rather ugly name, which tends to discourage the young students.

Usually a fiber, after being dipped in a liquid, shows a string of droplets, and thus, for some time, people thought that most common fibers were non-wettable.