The magic of Lloyd’s algorithm: Universal hidden order in amorphous cellular geometries
Animation file: (Nature Comms Suppl Info page) Read more
AIP Congress in Perth
The 2018 AIP Congress in Perth just finished. Thanks to all 780 or so delegates who came over to Perth for it, and made it a special event. More updates to be posted; for now check out www.aip2018.org.au or follow the tweets on #aipcongress2018
When mixed with oranges, pears prefer Diamonds….
… over Gyroids. Philipp Schönhöfer has completed a nice piece of work to extend on the pear-shaped particle simulations that we have been doing in collaboration with Doug Cleaver and Matthieu Marechal. Previously we had simulated a system of nearly hard pear-shaped particles and found that they form the Gyroid geometry. Now, it turns out that the addition of a small number of spherical particles leads to the formation of the double diamond phase, at least in relatively small simulation boxes.
Snow Flakes on Kelvin’s polyhedra: Thomas Pigeon’s artistic take on the 8-fold Gyroid topology
Congratulations to Thomas Pigeon on completing a lovely animation of the 8-srs structure, the 8-fold highly symmetric intergrowth of 8 equal-handed gyroid graphs. Thomas came to Murdoch University for a project in 2017, and self-taught himself the mastery of houdini. Thomas, thanks for sharing your beautiful animation: Read more
3′ Scope TV piece on Butterfly Colour
Scope TV aired this little episode a few months ago, describing some of our work on butterfly coloration. Special thanks to Bodo Wilts and to Michael Thiel for provision of some images. Read more
Herr Dr Simon Weis : Wet sand castles inside out
Congratulations to Simon Weis for the successful completion and defense of his PhD thesis “Structural analysis of particulate systems using X-ray tomography”, at the FAU in Erlangen. In only 3 years, Simon performed some great work on the properties of aspherical and wet granular packings and on Set Voronoi diagrams, under my and Matthias Schröter’s supervision. Read more
The various screw axis and helices of the single Gyroid
Animation file: (avi, 50MB)
This animation shows the single gyroid from multiple directions and discusses the screw symmetries (“helical symmetries”). These are funny, as in one single enantiomer, there are both right-handed and left-handed axes, depending on location and orientation.
Herr Dr Fabian Schaller : Packing placebo pills to understand aspherical granular matter
A belated congratulations to my PhD student Fabian Schaller who defended his PhD thesis in June 2017. Well done, Fabian!
Living Light Conference Cambridge April 2018
Very interesting conference on Biophotonics, organised by Silvia Vignolini and Villads Johansen. Read more
Myfanwy Evans’ animation of diffusive coarsening of a random liquid foam
Here’s Myfanwy Evans‘ animation of her Surface Evolver study of diffusive coarsening. Diffusive coarsening is the process by which the cells of a random liquid foam grow or shrink as a consequence of slow gas diffusion through the cell membranes, driven by pressure differences between adjacent cells. Read more