Explanipedia

Challenging common notions on how eggs break and the role of strength versus toughness Open

Antony Sutanto, Suhib Abu‐Qbeitah, Avishai Jeselsohn, Brendan Unikewicz, Joseph E. Bonavia , et al. · 2025

One experiment commonly used to teach young students about the response of structures to dynamic loading is the “egg drop challenge”, in which students design a device to protect an egg from cracking after a fall from a specified height. R…

An accessible instrument for measuring soft material mechanical properties Open

Brendan Unikewicz, André Pincot, Tal Cohen · 2025

Soft material research has seen significant growth in recent years, with emerging applications in robotics, electronics, and healthcare diagnostics where understanding the material mechanical response is crucial for precision design. Tradi…

Interfacial Cavitation with Surface Tension: New Insights into Failure of Particle Reinforced Polymers Open

Xuanhe Li, Brendan Unikewicz, S. Chockalingam, Hudson Borja da Rocha, Tal Cohen · 2025

Understanding and mitigating the failure of reinforced elastomers has been a long-standing challenge in many industrial applications. In an early attempt to shed light on the fundamental mechanisms of failure, Gent and Park presented a sys…

On the nonlinear Eshelby inclusion problem and its isomorphic growth limit Open

Joseph E. Bonavia, S. Chockalingam, Tal Cohen · 2025

In the late 1950s, Eshelby’s linear solutions for the deformation field inside an ellipsoidal inclusion and, subsequently, the infinite matrix in which it is embedded were published. The solutions’ ability to capture the behavior of an ort…

Photocatalytic Semiconductor–Metal Hybrid Nanoparticles: Single-Atom Catalyst Regime Surpasses Metal Tips Open

Shira Gigi, Tal Cohen, Daniel Zanetti de Florio, Adar Levi, David Stone , et al. · 2025

Semiconductor-metal hybrid nanoparticles (HNPs) are promising materials for photocatalytic applications, such as water splitting for green hydrogen generation. While most studies have focused on Cd containing HNPs, the realization of actua…

Lifting Generators in Connected Lie Groups Open

Tal Cohen, Itamar Vigdorovich · 2024

Given an epimorphism between topological groups $f:G\to H$, when can a generating set of $H$ be lifted to a generating set of $G$? We show that for connected Lie groups the problem is fundamentally abelian: generators can be lifted if and …

RLEF: Grounding Code LLMs in Execution Feedback with Reinforcement Learning Open

Jonas Gehring, Kangfeng Zheng, Jade Copet, Vegard Mella, Tal Cohen , et al. · 2024

Large language models (LLMs) deployed as agents solve user-specified tasks over multiple steps while keeping the required manual engagement to a minimum. Crucially, such LLMs need to ground their generations in any feedback obtained to rel…

Cylindrical Cavity Expansion: A Novel Method for Characterizing the Mechanical Properties of Soft Materials Open

Jian Li, Zihao Xie, Hannah Varner, Chockalingam Senthilnathan, Tal Cohen · 2024

The low elastic modulus of soft materials, combined with geometric nonlinearity and rate dependence, presents significant challenges in the characterization of their mechanical response. We introduce a novel method for measuring the mechan…

Explaining the spread in measurement of PDMS elastic properties: influence of test method and curing protocol Open

Hannah Varner, Tal Cohen · 2024

Accuracy in the measurement of mechanical properties is essential for precision engineering and for the interrogation of composition-property relationships. Conventional methods of mechanical testing, such as uniaxial tension, compression,…

An Accessible Instrument for Measuring Soft Material Mechanical Properties Open

Brendan Unikewicz, A. M. Pincot, Tal Cohen · 2024

Soft material research has seen significant growth in recent years, with emerging applications in robotics, electronics, and healthcare diagnostics where understanding material mechanical response is crucial for precision design. Tradition…

An Invitation to Analytic Group Theory Open

Tal Cohen, Tsachik Gelander · 2024

This book is concerned with analytic approaches of studying groups and their actions. Much attention is devoted to the study of amenability and Kazhdan's property (T), which are perhaps the most important analytic properties of a group, bu…

Biofilms as self-shaping growing nematics Open

Japinder Nijjer, Changhao Li, Mrityunjay Kothari, Thomas Henzel, Qiuting Zhang , et al. · 2023

Mechanical Forces Quench Frontal Polymerization: Experiments and Theory Open

Xuanhe Li, Tal Cohen · 2023

Frontal polymerization is a promising energy-saving method for rapid fabrication of polymer components with good mechanical properties. In these systems, a small energy input is sufficient to convert monomers, from a liquid or soft solid s…

A large deformation theory for coupled swelling and growth with application to growing tumors and bacterial biofilms Open

Chockalingam Senthilnathan, Tal Cohen · 2023

There is significant interest in modelling the mechanics and physics of growth of soft biological systems such as tumors and bacterial biofilms. Solid tumors account for more than 85% of cancer mortality and bacterial biofilms account for …

Elasticity of Whole Blood Clots Measured via Volume Controlled Cavity Expansion Open

Hannah Varner, Gabriella P. Sugerman, Manuel K. Rausch, Tal Cohen · 2023

Measuring and understanding the mechanical properties of blood clots can provide insights into disease progression and the effectiveness of potential treatments. However, several limitations hinder the use of standard mechanical testing me…

A Large Deformation Theory for Coupled Swelling and Growth with Application to Growing Tumors and Bacterial Biofilms Open

Chockalingam Senthilnathan, Tal Cohen · 2023

Torsion-induced stick-slip phenomena in the delamination of soft adhesives Open

Tara K. Venkatadri, Thomas Henzel, Tal Cohen · 2023

Propagation of stick-slip waves along the circumference of soft adhesive cylinders under combined torsion and compression is shown experimentally and explained by a theoretical model.

Torsional Instabilities in the Delamination of Soft Adhesives Open

Tara K. Venkatadri, Thomas Henzel, Tal Cohen · 2022

Soft adhesive contacts are ubiquitous in nature and are increasingly used in synthetic systems, such as flexible electronics and soft robots, due to their advantages over traditional joining techniques. While methods to study the failure o…

Periodic necking of misfit hyperelastic filaments embedded in a soft matrix Open

Jian Li, Hannah Varner, Tal Cohen · 2022

The necking instability is a precursor to tensile failure and rupture of materials. A quasistatically loaded free-standing uniaxial specimen typically exhibits necking at a single location, corresponding to a long wavelength bifurcation mo…

Biofilms as self-shaping growing nematics Open

Japinder Nijjer, Mrityunjay Kothari, Changhao Li, Thomas Henzel, Qiuting Zhang , et al. · 2022

Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active nemat…

Interfacial cavitation Open

Thomas Henzel, Japinder Nijjer, S. Chockalingam, Hares Wahdat, Alfred J. Crosby , et al. · 2022

Cavitation has long been recognized as a crucial predictor, or precursor, to the ultimate failure of various materials, ranging from ductile metals to soft and biological materials. Traditionally, cavitation in solids is defined as an unst…

Corrigendum: Human primitive brain displays negative mitochondrial-nuclear expression correlation of respiratory genes Open

Gilad Barshad, Dan G. Blumberg, Tal Cohen, Dan Mishmar · 2022

In the Methods subsection entitled "Control for age, gender, and cause of death," the text has been changed as follows: Control for age, gender, and cause of deathTo control for the possible contribution of age, gender, and cause of death …

Interfacial Cavitation Open

Thomas Henzel, Japinder Nijjer, Chockalingam Senthilnathan, Hares Wahdat, Alfred J. Crosby , et al. · 2022

Cavitation has long been recognized as a crucial predictor, or precursor, to the ultimate failure of various materials, ranging from ductile metals to soft and biological materials. Traditionally, cavitation in solids is defined as an unst…

A Reciprocal Theorem for Finite Deformations in Incompressible Bodies Open

Thomas Henzel, Chockalingam Senthilnathan, Tal Cohen · 2022

The reciprocal theorems of Maxwell and Betti are foundational in mechanics but have so far been restricted to infinitesimal deformations in elastic bodies. In this manuscript, we present a reciprocal theorem that relates solutions of a spe…

The crucial role of elasticity in regulating liquid-liquid phase separation in cells Open

Mrityunjay Kothari, Tal Cohen · 2022

Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as a fundamental mechanism underlying intracellular organization, with evidence for it being reported in numerous different systems. However, there is a growing concern regarding the lack of quant…

Code from Thermo-chemo-mechanically coupled cavity dynamics and the emergence of multi-phase bursts Open

S. Chockalingam, Jet Lem, Tal Cohen · 2022

Understanding the dynamics induced by confined thermo-chemical processes occurring inside a solid medium, is a fundamental problem of interest in several applications, such as hot-spot formation and micro-explosions in energetic materials …

Nonlinear inclusion theory with application to the growth and morphogenesis of a confined body Open

Jian Li, Mrityunjay Kothari, Chockalingam Senthilnathan, Thomas Henzel, Qiuting Zhang , et al. · 2021

Morphogenesis and cell ordering in confined bacterial biofilms Open

Qiuting Zhang, Jian Li, Japinder Nijjer, Haoran Lu, Mrityunjay Kothari , et al. · 2021

Significance Biofilms are microbial cities in which bacterial cells reside in a polymeric matrix. They are commonly found inside soft confining environments such as food matrices and host tissues, against which bacteria must push to prolif…

Observation of Ultraslow Shock Waves in a Tunable Magnetic Lattice Open

Jian Li, S. Chockalingam, Tal Cohen · 2021

The combination of fast propagation speeds and highly localized nature has hindered the direct observation of the evolution of shock waves at the molecular scale. To address this limitation, an experimental system is designed by tuning a o…

Stick–slip phenomena and Schallamach waves captured using reversible cohesive elements Open

Evelyne Ringoot, Thibault Roch, Jean‐François Molinari, Thierry Massart, Tal Cohen · 2021

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