The Berkeley-Stanford Computational Mechanics Fest took place this
Saturday. Twelve professors, some from Stanford and some from
Berkeley, spoke on numerical models of various problems in
mechanics; the topics included things phenomenta such as
sedimentation, ductile fracture, dislocation dynamics, granular
flows, and anisotropic surface friction. I thought the talks were
generally quite good. In fact, I was surprised that out of twelve
talks there were none that I would consider snoozers.
Because
of overestimates of the attendance, there was a lot of
food, and so I was well-fed as well as well-entertained. It was a
good day.
I think my favorite talk was by Phil Marcus, who spoke about planet formation. Actually, he spoke about vortex formation in proto-planetary dust. The problem is interesting to astrophysicists because vortices provide one possible mechanism for the sort of clumping from which planets may be born. It's also interesting because a number of physical effects balance in ways we're not used to from our terrestrial experience. There were lots of pretty pictures of vortices going unstable and shedding gravity waves which launched other vortices; I've probably made a mistake in my summary, but at least the explanation was sufficiently within my background that I understood what I was seeing pictures of. Good stuff.