Cracking the Whip: Strings, Chains, and Dinosaurs
- Date & time
- Speaker
- Professor Alain Goriely FRSGresham Professor of Geometry
- Location
- Barnard's Inn Hall
- Organisation
- Gresham College
Topics
More information & booking (opens in new tab)Free to attend
About this talk
A cracking whip is invariably surprising. What generates such a stunning sound? In this lecture, through simple demonstrations of whips and chains on a pulley, Professor Goriely builds simple models to explain the extreme acceleration that takes place in the motion of ropes. In particular, he shows how these models have solutions that blow up to infinity and learns, like the dinosaurs did, how to tame these infinities to produce a stunning crack.
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