Zhigang Suo's blog
ResearcherID, a unique identifier of a researcher
On the Web of Science my name appears sometimes as Suo Z and sometimes as Suo ZG. If I search for Suo Z*, papers by a biologist named Suo ZM mix in. Now Suo is a very rare name. I cannot imagine how Wang JS searches for his papers. Last year Michelle Oyen and I talked about assigning a unique identifier to each researcher, much like assigning an ISBN to each edition of a book, or assigning a DOI to each paper.
Use Google to search in iMechanica and send email to you
iMechanica has a search box, but its algorithm is less sophisticated than that of Google. You may wish to use Google to search content on iMechanica. For example, if you are looking for friction in iMechanica, type into the Google search box: friction site:imechanica.org
If instead you are only interested in rolling friction, then type into the Google search box: "rolling friction" site:imechanica.org. The quotation marks ensure that all the included words appear in search results.
Elastic dielectrics, slides for a short tutorial
Rob Wood teaches a course on micro/nano robotics, and asks me to give a 30-minute tutorial on the theory of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs). I attach my slides, which might be useful to you if you'd like to include this topic in your class. The tutorial draws upon work in the literature, as well as recent work in my group:
6000 registered users of iMechanica
Early this week the number of registered users passed 6000. Our growth rate remains nearly a constant, about 10 new users per day. In January Teng plotted some basic statistics of iMechanica.
Large deformation and instability in gels
I'm attaching slides of a talk that I gave yesterday at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center. In preparing the talk, I made liberal use of slides prepared by Wei Hong for his own presentations. The talk is mainly based on the following papers:
PDEs and complex analysis
To students of AM 105a:
On 26 October 2007, Albert Tsou sent in the following Q & A.
Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy"?
A: Because the dog left a residue at every pole.
As you know, certain sections in Saff and Snider upset me, and I have deviated from the book. We all agree that no text should be held as an authority. But now, both you and I are paying for the deviation.
Collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 7 November 1940
In today's class of complex analysis, my co-instructor Scott Norris was lecturing on resonance. He mentioned a YouTube video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Also instructive is the entry of the bridge on Wikipedia.
Moebius transformations
Michael Brenner has just pointed out to me this video of the Moebius transformations.