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Physics Colloquium - Friday, January
22th, 2010,
3:00 P.M.
E300 Math/Science
Center; Refreshments at 2:30 P.M. in
Room E200
Corey O'Hern
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Physics
Yale University
What Do We Know about Static Packings: From Hard Spheres to
Ellipsoidal Particles and from Collapsed Polymers to Folded Proteins?
In this talk, I will survey my recent computational and
theoretical studies of static packings with different particle shapes
and interactions, dimensionality, boundary conditions, and
constraints. In particular, I will highlight four interesting
results: 1. The probability with which particular packings occur is
highly nonuniform, 2. Continuous geometrical parameterizations of
states are necessary to characterize frictional packings and those
over a range of boundary conditions, 3. Static packings of ellipsoidal
particles have very different structural and mechanical properties
compared to packings of spherical particles, and 4. Structural
properties of model collapsed polymers are highly sensitive to the
preparation history.
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