Soft Matter

Concepts, Phenomena, and Applications

  1. From designing matter to
    mimicking life
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10.1
10.2
10.3

10.4
Coding Problems
Errata

The additional material is organized according to book sections and it includes links to (review) papers mentioned in the book, videos of different phenomena we discuss (experiments and simulations), as well as links to online lectures that address certain topics in more details.

10.1   Designer Matter

Printing 3d colloids in various shapes
in the Kraft lab.
From Leiden Institute of Physics.

Reversible self-folding of a hydrogel.
From Junhee Na.

 A universal gripper: grabbing, drawing,
and pouring. From University of Chicago.

Highly stretchable tough medical gel.
From Design Insider.

Self-healing polymer.
From Penn State Research.

Ultra lightweight material.
From Ultralight Academy.

A TED talk by Sharon Glotzer on “Transforming Nanoscience”. From TEDx.

A short talk by Sharon Glotzer on “Digital Alchemy”. From Quanta Magazine.

General lecture by Andrea Liu on “How materials can learn to function”. From Aspen Physics.

A talk by Dave Pine on “Self-assembly of colloidal diamond for photonics”. From Raman Research Institute.

Physics of photonic bandgap materials.
From EMPossible.

A video of 2d crystalization of DNA-coated particles from Rogers lab.
From Rogers Lab Brandeis University.

A two part Lecture by William Shih on “Nanofabrication via DNA Origami” and “Nanofabrication via DNA Single Stranded Bricks”. From Science Communication Lab.

A lecture by Paul Rothemund on DNA Origami.
From Caltech.

Nature magazine short presentation on the “Ten years of DNA origami”. From Nature Video.

Videos on DNA origami based icosahedral shell: (left) a short presentation of the design from Fraden lab, and (right) a lecture by Hendrik Dietz on “Virus Traps and Other Molecular Machines of the Future”. From Fraden Lab (left) and Foresight Institute (right).

Inflatable fabric initially planar transforms into a shell when pressurized from Benoît Roman, José Bico and Etienne Reyssat

Shape morphing elastomers, work published in Nature magazine, done in MecaWet lab at ESPCI (Benoît Roman, José Bico and Etienne Reyssat).

Examples of baromorphes from MecaWet Lab at ESPCI (Benoît Roman, José Bico and Etienne Reyssat).

10.2  Memory formation in matter

The rubber computer from van Hecke lab.
From Leiden Institute of Physics.

On Hopfield networks and associative memory by John Hopfield. From Lex Clips.

 

 

Four lectures on Memory, aging, and training in materials by Sid Nagel, given at the 2024  Amherst summer school on Soft Solids and Complex fluids. Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3, Lecture 4. Slides are also available from the school’s website.

10.3  Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

 Lecture 1 by Steve Brunton: Types of Machine Learning. From Steve Brunton.

 Lecture 2 by Steve Brunton: Types of Machine Learning. From Steve Brunton.

 Lecture 3 by Steve Brunton: Artificial Intelligence. From Steve Brunton.

 Lecture 4 by Steve Brunton: Neural Network Overview. From Steve Brunton.

 Lecture 5 by Steve Brunton: Machine Learning Control: Genetic Algorithms. From Steve Brunton.

  • Below you can find three lectures by Steve Brunton on Machine Learnind and Fluid Dynamics/Mechanics

 Lecture 1 on CFD by Steve Brunton: Machine Learning for Computational Fluid Dynamics.
From Steve Brunton. 

 Lecture 2 on CFD by Steve Brunton: Machine Learning for Fluid Mechanics.
From Steve Brunton. 

 Lecture 3 on CFD by Steve Brunton: Machine Learning for Fluid Dynamics: Models and Control.
From Steve Brunton.  

  • Below you can find three short videos from the Vitelli lab on active nematics and machine learning.

Machine Learning Active Nematics Hydrodynamics – Video 1. From Vitelli Lab.

 Machine Learning Active Nematics Hydrodynamics – Video 2. From Vitelli Lab.

 Machine Learning Active Nematics Hydrodynamics – Video 3. From Vitelli Lab.

The Royal Institution on AI: Understanding AlphaFold – with Dame Janet Thornton.
From The Royal Institution.

  • A talk about physics aspects of Deep Learning

A talk by Max Welling about “The physics inside Deep Learning“. Talk starts at 5.18 minutes.

10.4   Artificial Life
  • Below you can find a series of short videos that discuss artificial self-replicating systems

Self-replicating blocks from Hod Lipson‘s Creative Machines Lab.
From Skitterbot.

A short animation of the molecules that make copies of themselves, inspired by the experimental system of Sijbren Otto.
From Yigit Altay.

A lecture by Gerald Joyce on “Self-replicating synthetic systems”. From MoleCluesTV.

“Self-assembling robots at MIT” a short discussion between Neil Gershenfeld and Lex Fridman. From Lex Clips.

A series of 1958 demonstrations of Lionel Penrose of mechanical self-replication using cleverly designed wooden units. From Tim Taylor.

Reproduction of Xenobots – synthetic lifeforms designed by computers to perform some desired function, built by combining together different biological tissues. From Engadget.

  • A few examples of bio-inspired designer matter/materials

” From rigid to soft to biological robots” – talk by Josh Bongard. From Josh Bongard.

A talk by Skylar Tibbits on ” What Can Intelligent Materials Do?” From The Royal Institution.

Evolution of Boston Dynamics robots.
From 11 Network Australia.

A short video showing engineered colloidal particles that mimic artificial cells.
From Sacanna Lab.

An artificial cell mimicing “eating” E. coli.
From Sacanna Lab.

Coding Problems

Our aim is to make coding problems available for all chapters, including this one, by the end of 2025.

Errata