Capillary Self-assembly in Nature

Thursday, March 19, 2009
9:00 - 10:00 AM
Room 229, Norris Hall

Dr. Sunghwan (Sunny) Jung
Dept. of Mathematics, MIT

The bio-structures found in nature are well-adapted to their environments,having gone through selective competition for over a billion years. Engineers have taken some ideas from nature and applied them to a variety of engineering problems. In this talk, I present three examples of combined theoretical and experimental studies that explore the wisdom of nature.

1. Packing of floating eggs: Mosquito eggs have been observed to self-assemble into coherent packings on the water interface, which prevents such aggregates from sinking.
2. Sinking flowers: a flexible flower on an air-water interface deforms under hydrostatic loadings, which prevents inundation, thereby protecting genetic material.
3. Spider thread as viscous adhesives: the formation of adhesive droplets along the spider thread provides a damping mechanism for the impact of prey.

The common underlying physics of these systems is the interaction between soft bio-structures and fluid forces that give rise to novel phenomena. Engineering applications are envisaged and discussed.

Biographical Sketch:
2005 PhD in physics, Univ. of Texas at Austin
2005-2007 Postdoctoral Researcher, Courant Institute at NYU.
2007- Instructor, Applied Math at MIT

Complete list of upcoming seminars