text: The system of colloids and depletants in solution is typically modeled by treating the large colloids and small depletants as dissimilarly sized hard spheres. Hard spheres are characterized as non-interacting and impenetrable spheres. These two fundamental properties of hard spheres are described mathematically by the hard-sphere potential. The hard-sphere potential imposes steric constraint around large spheres which in turn gives rise to excluded volume, that is, volume that is unavailable for small spheres to occupy.