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Fracture mechanics

Breaking fast and slow

When cracks creep forward in our three-dimensional world, they do so because of accompanying cracks racing perpendicular to the main direction of motion with almost sonic speed. Clever experiments have now directly demonstrated this phenomenon.

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Fig. 1: Experiment on crack propagation.

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Correspondence to Michael Marder.

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Marder, M. Breaking fast and slow. Nat. Phys. 20, 546–547 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02389-0

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