[Emeriti-faculty] Colloquium tomorrow 3pm

["Atherton, Timothy James" <Timothy Atherton tufts edu>]

Dear Physics Faculty,

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Christian Santangelo tomorrow from UMass 
Amherst. His talk title and abstract is attached below. Could anyone 
interested in joining us for lunch or an early (5pm) dinner please let me 
know…

Tim Atherton

-------
"Building shapes from sheets"

Christian Santangelo

Despite their everyday familiarity, thin sheets (paper, plastic, fabric, 
etc.) display remarkable and complex behaviors that still challenge 
theoretical description. The intricate coupling between the geometry of 
surfaces and the elasticity of a thin sheet necessarily leads to the 
formation of singularities, nonlinear elasticity, and geometric 
frustration. Nevertheless, multicellular organisms - like you - develop 
their three dimensional structures in part by exploiting these elastic 
phenomena. These considerations have led us to develop theoretical and 
experimental tools to shape elastic sheets into prescribed 3D shapes using 
the principles of non-Euclidean geometry. I will describe our attempts to 
design sheets that fold controllably into 3D structures and some related 
problems in the mechanics of origami, where 3D structure is developed by 
folding a piece of paper. These techniques open up new avenues in 
"experimental mathematics", allowing us to explore geometry 
experimentally. So far, however, no mathematical theorems have been harmed 
in the production of this research.