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Scanning tunneling microscopy experiments have revealed an spontaneous rippled-to-buckled transition in heated graphene sheets, in absence of any mechanical load. Several models relying on a simplified picture of the interaction between…
Many elastic structures exhibit rapid shape transitions between two possible equilibrium states: umbrellas become inverted in strong wind and hopper popper toys jump when turned inside-out. This snap-through is a general motif for the…
A particle diffusing around a point of stable mechanical equilibrium in a static but non-conservative force field enters into a steady state characterized by circulation in the probability flux. Circulation in such a Brownian vortex is not…
Wrinkling of an inextensible elastic lining of an inner-lined tube under imposed pressure is considered. A simple equation modeling the elastic properties of the lining, the pressure, and the soft-substrate forces is derived. This equation…
We study a model of rolling particles subject to stochastic fluctuations, which may be relevant in systems of nano- or micro-scale particles where rolling is an approximation for strong static friction. We consider the simplest possible…
We describe the physics of an articulated toy with an internal source of energy provided by a spiral spring. The toy is a funny low cost kangaroo which jumps and rotates. The study consists of a mechanical and a thermodynamical analysis…
In May 2022, an apparent speculative attack, followed by market panic, led to the precipitous downfall of UST, one of the most popular stablecoins at that time. However, UST is not the only stablecoin to have been depegged in the past.…
Capillary forces acting at the surface of a liquid drop can be strong enough to deform small objects and recent studies have provided several examples of elastic instabilities induced by surface tension. We present such an example where a…
{\it Jacob's ladder} -- a classic children's toy -- is a simple mechanical frame comprising rigid blocks connected by strings that shows curious unidirectional flipping waves. Nonetheless, its physical origin remains elusive. By combining…
I study a repeated auction in which payments are made with a blockchain token created and initially owned by the auction designer. Unlike the ``virtual money'' previously examined in mechanism design, such tokens can be saved and traded…
A sheet of elastic foil rolled into a cylinder and deformed between two parallel plates acts as a non-Hookean spring if deformed normally to the axis. For large deformations the elastic force shows an interesting inverse squares dependence…
On the surface of a vibrating liquid bath, instead of coalescing, a drop will continually bounce on a thin film of air between the drop and the free surface, giving rise to rich chaotic dynamics and quantum analog behavior. However,…
Previous experiments [M. J. Coleman and A. Ruina, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 3658 (1998)] showed that a gravity-powered toy with no control and which has no statically stable near-standing configurations can walk stably. We show here that a…
We report a surface instability observed during the extrusion of extremely soft elastic solids in confined geometries. Due to their unique rheological properties, these soft solids can migrate through narrow gaps by continuously everting…
Cavitation in solids can be caused by tensile dead-load traction or impulse traction. The two different types of boundary conditions lead to different static and dynamic solutions. In addition, if the material is stochastic, i.e., the model…
The cryptographic protocol of coin tossing consists of two parties, Alice and Bob, that do not trust each other, but want to generate a random bit. If the parties use a classical communication channel and have unlimited computational…
The Leidenfrost effect occurs when an object near a hot surface vaporizes rapidly enough to lift itself up and hover. Although well-understood for liquids and stiff sublimable solids, nothing is known about the effect with materials whose…
We revisit the problem of the "probability of inflation" from the point of view of the Einstein-Cartan theory, where torsion can be present off-shell even in the absence of spinorial currents. An informal estimate suggests that the barrier…
We have studied the statistical mechanics of money circulation in a closed economic system. An explicit statistical formulation of the circulation velocity of money is presented for the first time by introducing the concept of holding time…
The material characterization of ultra-thin solid sheets, including two-dimensional materials like graphene, is often performed through indentation tests on a flake suspended over a hole in a substrate. While this `suspended indentation' is…