Featured
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News & Views |
Far from the equilibrium crowd
Amorphous gel structures are present in our everyday lives in the form of food, cosmetics, and biological systems. Experiments now show that their formation cannot be explained within the framework of equilibrium physics.
- Michael Schmiedeberg
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Article |
Hierarchical amorphous ordering in colloidal gelation
Dynamic arrest in amorphous gels has so far been ascribed to glass transition. Now, experiments reveal a hierarchical structural ordering in dilute colloidal gels driven by the local potential energy, making this type of gel distinct from amorphous glasses.
- Hideyo Tsurusawa
- & Hajime Tanaka
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Article |
The hidden hierarchical nature of soft particulate gels
Colloidal gels consist of particles embedded in a fluid. It is now found that a gel’s viscoelastic spectrum, relating mechanical properties and deformation frequencies, can be understood by modelling these gels as networks of fractal viscoelastic units, connected hierarchically.
- Minaspi Bantawa
- , Bavand Keshavarz
- & Emanuela Del Gado
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Letter |
The cusp of an apple
A study of growing apples shows that the singular cusp at the stalk has a universal form that arises due to the differential growth of a soft solid. Although the cusps are usually symmetric, they can lose stability to form lobes that depend on the geometry of the fruit.
- Aditi Chakrabarti
- , Thomas C. T. Michaels
- & L. Mahadevan
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Article |
Mitotic cells generate protrusive extracellular forces to divide in three-dimensional microenvironments
Little is known about how a cell’s surroundings within tissue influence the mechanics of its division. Experiments on constrained dividing cells reveal that they create protrusive forces in order to undergo the shape changes required for division.
- Sungmin Nam
- & Ovijit Chaudhuri
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Letter |
Instability in dynamic fracture and the failure of the classical theory of cracks
Understanding crack formation is important for improving the mechanical performance of materials. A new theory is now presented for the description of cracks propagating at high speeds, with elastic nonlinearity as the underlying principle.
- Chih-Hung Chen
- , Eran Bouchbinder
- & Alain Karma
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Letter |
Coupling the Leidenfrost effect and elastic deformations to power sustained bouncing
Water droplets skid across hot surfaces, hovering imperceptibly as they undergo rapid vaporization. Elastic solids are now shown to exhibit a variant of this behaviour, engaging in sustained bouncing by coupling vapour release to elastic deformation.
- Scott R. Waitukaitis
- , Antal Zuiderwijk
- & Martin van Hecke
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Letter |
Liquids more stable than crystals in particles with limited valence and flexible bonds
Patchy colloidal systems consist of particles with attractive patches on them. If the bonds between particles are allowed to be flexible, a colloidal liquid state may be observed as the system approaches zero temperature.
- Frank Smallenburg
- & Francesco Sciortino