Related papers: Spinning eggs--which end will rise?
Many people have flipped coins but few have stopped to ponder the statistical and physical intricacies of the process. We collected $350{,}757$ coin flips to test the counterintuitive prediction from a physics model of human coin tossing…
To understand how spherical geometry influences the dynamics of gravity-driven subduction of oceanic lithosphere on Earth, we study a simple model of a thin and dense axisymmetric shell of thickness $h$ and viscosity $\eta_1$ sinking in a…
Recent studies show interest in materials with asymmetric friction forces. We investigate terminal motion of a solid body with circular contact area. We assume that friction forces are asymmetric orthotropic. Two cases of pressure…
Possible types of elementary excitations in the symmetric spin-orbital model on the a square lattice are analyzed using a spherically symmetric self-consistent approach. The excitation spectra are calculated. The behavior of the…
Initially cold and spherically symmetric self-gravitating systems may give rise to a virial equilibrium state which is far from spherically symmetric, and typically triaxial. We focus here on how the degree of symmetry breaking in the final…
Starting from a detailed model for the kinetics of a step edge or island boundary, we derive a Gibbs-Thomson type formula and the associated step stiffness as a function of the step edge orientation angle, $theta$. Basic ingredients of the…
Spin-orbit coupling is of fundamental interest in both quantum optical and condensed matter systems alike. In this work, we show that optically induced electronic excitations in lattices of V-type atoms exhibit an emergent spin-orbit…
A first-order transition is numerically found in a spherical surface model with skeletons, which are linked to each other at junctions. The shape of the triangulated surfaces is maintained by skeletons, which have a one-dimensional bending…
The collapse of a vapor bubble near a flat solid boundary results in the formation of a jet that is directed towards the boundary. In more complex geometries such as corners, predictions of the collapse cannot be made in a straightforward…
The kinetics of spreading of a liquid drop in a wedge or V-shaped groove, in a network of such grooves, and on a hydrophilic strip, is re-examined. The length of a droplet of volume Omega spreading in a wedge after a time t is predicted to…
In this paper, we report a novel experimental and theoretical study to examine the response of a soft capsule bathed in a liquid environment to sudden external impacts. Taking an egg yolk as an example, we found that the soft matter is not…
Proteins with nontrivial topology, containing knots and slipknots, have the ability to fold to their native states without any additional external forces invoked. A mechanism is suggested for folding of these proteins, such as YibK and…
Equations of motion of an axially symmetric sphere rolling and sliding on a plane are usually taken as model of the tippe top. We study these equations in the nonsliding regime both in the vector notation and in the Euler angle variables…
We consider a classical problem of a capillary neck between a parabolic body and a plane with a small amount of liquid in between. In the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the contact area between the bodies and the liquid layer has a…
We show that edges of Quantum Spin Hall topological insulators represent a natural platform for realization of exotic supersolid phase. On one hand, fermionic edge modes are helical due to the nontrivial topology of the bulk. On the other…
There has been recent work using Shape Theory to answer the longstanding and conceptually interesting problem of what is the probability that a triangle is obtuse. This is resolved by three kissing cap-circles of rightness being realized on…
We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…
We present a general theory about electron orbital motions in topological insulators. An in-plane electric field drives spin-up and spin-down electrons bending to opposite directions, and skipping orbital motions, a counterpart of the…
Focusing on a small set of proteins that i) fold in a concerted, all-or-none fashion and ii) do not contain knots or slipknots, we show that the Gauss linking integral, the torsion and the number of sequence-distant contacts provide…
A comprehensive study of the classical linear spin-down of a constant density viscous fluid (kinematic viscosity \nu) rotating rapidly (angular velocity \Omega) inside an axisymmetric cylindrical container (radius L, height H) with rigid…