Theory Group Lunchtime Seminars
Scheduled seminars are listed below.
Announcements and reminders will be posted to the physics-theory-group-seminar list.
To join this list:
- Sign into your university email account via webmail.
- Click the settings icon along the top icon bar (looks like a cog/gear).
- In the "Search Outlook settings" box type "distribution groups" and click the top search result.
- Under "Distribution groups I belong to" click the icon with two little people and a "+" sign.
- Search for physics-theory-group-seminar and double click on the result.
- Click "join". You will then be added to the email list once approved by a moderator.
To leave this list:
- Sign into your university email account via webmail.
- Click the settings icon along the top icon bar (looks like a cog/gear).
- In the "Search Outlook settings" box type "distribution groups" and click the top search result.
- Under "Distribution groups I belong to" click
physics-theory-group-seminar. - Click the "leave" icon above the list (looks like two people with a minus sign to their bottom right).
[If you are a member of Theory group, you will receive seminar announcements via physics-theory or physics-theory-staff. You do NOT need to subscribe to the above mailing list as well.]
Theory Seminar: John Biggins (Cambridge), Large strain elasticity: geometry, instability and brains
We are all familiar with the prototypical elastic instability: the buckling of a slender column under a compressive load. Soft elastic solids, such as rubbers, gels, and biological tissues, are united by their ability to sustain very large shape changes, and consequently undergo a range of more exotic elastic instabilities underpinned by the non-linear geometry of large strains. I will discuss several such instabilities, including fingering in soft solid layers under tension, beading in solid cylinders subject to surface tension, and a brand new "peristaltic" instability in inflated cylindrical channels. In the second half of the talk, I will discuss the buckling of a growing layer adhered to a soft substrate. I will argue on symmetry grounds that such buckling will inevitably produce patterns of hexagonal dents near threshold, and then make a biological case that this buckling process leads to the folded shape of the human brain.