Zhigang Suo's blog

I'm teaching Applied Mathematics 105a this semester.  The main content of the course is complex analysis.  The course is taken mainly by undergraduate students in Engineering, Physics, and Applied Mathematics.  There are about 70 people in the class, which makes it the largest class I have taught in the last 10 years. I have never taught a course on complex analysis before, but have used complex analysis in my research, and have taught the method of complex variables in my graduate course on elasticity.

I attach slides for an ASME talk, which is based on a recent paper.

I attach the slides of a presentation at the ASME meeting.  The talk was based on several recent papers on soft active materials (SAMs).  To give an uncluttered picture of the pull-in instability, I have removed all discussion on the Maxwell stress.   As you can see, the problem can be studied without ever mentioning this troublesome notion.

This semester I'm teaching an undergraduate course on functions of a complex variable.  A student has just sent me a message:

Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy"?

A: Because the dog left a residue at every pole.

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I received an email several weeks ago with the following quote:

Each year, several new students begin their studies of Solid Mechanics for PhD degrees at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  The students come from all over the world.  We have no constraint on where they come from.