Topic: physical properties

This episode examines water’s unusual physical properties and research testing whether liquid water can be understood through two distinct structural states. It also explores efforts to identify research misconduct, including image manipulation and fabricated publications, and the tools and post-publication review practices used by independent investigators.

The dream of programmable matter is to create materials whose physical properties (shape, moduli, response to perturbations, etc.) can be changed on the fly. For many years, my group has been thinking about how to program flat sheets that fold up into three dimensional shapes, most recently by exploiting the principles of origami design. Unfortunately, a combinatorial explosion of folding pathways makes robust folding particularly challenging. In this talk, I will discuss how this pluripotency arises from the topology of the configuration space. This suggests a broader understanding of a large