Here is My and Kathleen's PowerPoint presentation. Have fun with it.

Kathleen DiSanto and I are interested in finding out what the displacemnet distribution is for an elastic sphere contacting a ridgid surface. This Problem has many applications in sports such as golf and baseball, where the golf club and the baseball bat can be seen as ridgid materials compared to the elastic golf ball or baseball.

We will tackle the problem by understanding the theory behind the static contact problem of a elastic sphere and a falt ridgid surface, compared it to a finite elemnet analysis in ABAQUS and then talk about how our model changes when for example golf is preformed.

The hyperlink for reviews on this book on amazon.com is the following:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0073107956/ref=cm_cr_d...

 My name is Maria Persson Gulda. I am a first year grad student at Harvard. I did my undergrad in Engineering Physics, with a minor in Applied Math, at University of Colorado at Boulder.

The classes from my undergrad that are closest related to this course are Classical Mechanics and Solid State Physics. I think my strength in ES 240 will be my applied math knowledge and my weakness will be my lack of courses in mechanics and/or materials.