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from the Cogswell's-Cosmic-Cogs-vs-Spacely's-Space-Sprockets? dept.
A specifically designed collection of gears is soft on one end and rigid on the other. These robust properties hold even in the event of manufacturing imperfections. This emerging research may lead to new ways of designing geared devices like satellite trackers or watches, and the study has been reported in Physical Review X.
Imagine two connected gear wheels. Turning one clockwise causes the other to turn counterclockwise. Connecting a third gear to both causes the system to get stuck. Leiden physicists Anne Meeussen and Jayson Paulose now have developed a complex assembly of gears that sticks in one place, but which operates in another. Considered as a new metamaterial, it is rigid on one end and soft on the other.
In the video below, this remarkable mechanism seems like magic, but the researchers mathematically devised it. 'The beauty of this principle is that it's a robust system,' says group leader Prof. Vincenzo Vitelli. 'We can decide which parts are soft or rigid, and the mechanism keeps working even if the gears are imperfect. This property is often called topological robustness.'
The video referenced in the story is available on YouTube.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 24 2016, @02:54AM
Since it isn't magic, it's still limited by the materials it's made of. Adding this complexity makes for a porous and fragile version of whatever it's made of, which could never compete with the solid material for use as armor.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek