2023-07-11 06:00:17
A piece of rubber capable of counting to ten: it is the fruit of the work of physicists Martin Van Hecke and Lennard Kwakernaak, from the University of Leiden and the AMOLF research institute in Amsterdam. The latter recently presented this new metamaterial in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Lennard Kwakernaak presents a sample of this rubber equipped with 22 rods grouped in pairs. He calls it a “bar counter”. When pressed, the result is unexpected: the bars all curve to the left, except the first, which curves (In geometry, the word curve, or curved line designates certain subsets of…) towards the LAW. This last pushes (Pousse is the name given to an illegal car race in Réunion.) then the next pair (We say that a set E is a pair when it is formed of two distinct elements…) following to the right , a behavior that moves one rank with each pressure (Pressure is a fundamental physical notion. We can see it as a reported force…). This is how the material (A material is a material of natural or artificial origin that man shapes…) “counts” up to ten.
This block of rubber is an example of a mechanical metamaterial. The properties of these materials are determined not only by their composition, but also by their structure. Martin Van Hecke’s team is studying how simple materials can be used to process information, much like a computer (A computer is a machine equipped with a processing unit allowing it…).
A bar that runs from left to right is similar to a computer bit representing a ‘0’ or a ‘1’. According to Kwakernaak, designing the structure to respond as desired is not straightforward. Counting is the simplest computation they might devise, so it was a logical starting point (Logic (from the Greek logikê, derived from logos (λόγος),…).
Lennard Kwakernaak explains that when developing such a material, one must understand how it works. Here, its behavior is relative to the contact of a bar with its direct neighbours. The research team also succeeded in making rubber react differently depending on the level of force exerted when pressed, allowing the creation of a metamaterial that counts until the end only if pressed with the good strength.
These metamaterials might have multiple applications, such as counting cars of different weight categories (Weight is the force of gravity, of gravitational and inertial origin, exerted by the…) passing over a bridge, or the creation of a pedometer. They are advantageous because they are cheap, sturdy and require little maintenance. Kwakernaak, on the other hand, particularly enjoys seeing how seemingly simple things can turn out to be complex.
The next step for Lennard Kwakernaak is to design a more “powerful” structure, where the interaction between neighbors occurs not just in one direction, but in one plane. “It might have the behavior of a simple computer” according to him.
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