New research about how paper crumples was done in the same chunk of Harvard that produced an Ig Nobel Prize-winning study about how sheets get wrinkled. It builds on—and adds new wrinkles to—that earlier research. Siobhan Roberts reports, in the New York Times, about the paper-crumpling study: This Is the Way the Paper Crumples In a […]
Tag: sheets
Why Are Bird Eggs Bird-Egg-Shaped? [New research from an Ig Nobellian]
Mahadevan, who won an Ig Nobel Physics Prize in 2007 for studying how/why wrinkled sheets become wrinkled, has a new study out about how/why bird eggs become bird-egg shaped. The study, by Mahadevan and several collaborators, is: “Avian Egg Shape: Form, Function, and Evolution,” Mary Caswell Stoddard, Ee Hou Yong, Derya Akkaynak, Catherine Sheard, Joseph […]
A loving, applied mathematical tribute across a generation
L. Mahadevan, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in physics for studying how sheets get wrinkled, wrote a loving tribute, a few months ago, to his teacher Joseph Keller [pictured here]. Keller is a two-time Ig Nobel Prize winner. The entire essay appears in SIAM News. Here are snippets: Joe Keller’s contributions to the […]
Ig Nobel winner’s turkey (and other) carving insight
The BBC celebrates a newly published study by Mahadevan [pictured here], the man who (with colleague Enrique Cerda Villablanca) was awarded the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize in physics for studying how sheets get wrinkled. The new study is: “Slicing Softly with Shear,” E. Reyssat, T. Tallinen, M. Le Merrer, and L. Mahadevan, Physical Review Letters, epub […]
Domino-stacking in quasi-parallel sheets, with a cat
A rare video of domino-stacking in quasi-parallel sheets, with a cat: (Thanks to investigator Sip Siperstein for bringing this to our attention.)
On and in crumpled paper
Crumpled paper fascinates physicists, most of whom nevertheless continue to throw away most of the paper they crumple. But some do pause to analyze what they’ve wrought. Wired reports about a recent case of this: “Crush a piece of typing paper into the size of a golf ball, and suddenly it becomes a very stiff […]
Sheet-wrinkle Ig winner profiled
Ig Nobel Prize-winner L. Mahadevan (who studied how sheets become wrinkled) is profiled in the Times of India: …just another feather in Mahadevan’s cap. He has received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2009 and in 2007, he won the Ig-Nobel prize which is awarded for fun, outrageous or amusing innovations. “It’s nothing to be proud […]