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Physics Table
I miss you all and would love to see your face! Join us tomorrow (Tuesday the 28th) at noon, Central time on zoom. https://carleton.zoom.us/j/568501808
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Recent Alumni Talk #2
Daria Atkinson ’15 will give a talk this week on Thursday at noon. Come hear cool stuff, and build your network!https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/91596640068?pwd=aEM1N1Z2YmVqM2cxbUVqcFlsaUVqdz09
Meeting ID: 915 9664 0068
Password: 069137
The shape of things: what can geometry tell us about soft materials?The world around you is full of soft materials, from the food in your kitchen and the soap you use to clean it, to the textiles you wear, the paper you write on, and the yarns and fibers they’re made of. While these materials behave classically, the ease with which they deform in our everyday lives means that their shape is deeply connected to their physical properties. This talk will introduce the language of shape as a way to study soft materials, and show how we can describe the elastic response of soft materials from cell membranes to sheets of paper and from DNA to yarn. After introducing a geometric framework for these materials generally, I’ll talk specifically about bundles of filaments and fibers, which provide a nice example of how thinking geometrically can teach us things about materials and their configurations we wouldn’t otherwise know.