Need the volume of a broken triangle mesh? Don't bother fixing it. Just sum over all triangles (𝐚ᵢ, 𝐛ᵢ, 𝐜ᵢ) the dot product of one vertex with the cross product of the other two, and divide by 6. [Caveat: all normals must point out. Works even for nonconvex shapes!]

Picking winners in cell-cell collisions: Wetting, speed, and contact, Pedrom Zadeh and Brian A. Camley #Biophysics #SoftMatter #Fluids go.aps.org/3AXCT1k

Jumping spiders can move each eye independently. The lens itself is fixed on the exoskeleton, but the eye tubes can swivel around internally 👀 The black retina is only visible from the front when the eye is focused ahead! Lyssomanes viridis, magnolia green jumper

This fucking guy

Structural Mechanics - Douglas Holmes: Orb Weaver Webs, Geckos, and Capillary Origami structuralmechanics.substack.com/p/orb-weaver-w…

Lloyd algorithm can be used to progressively diffuse points, defining a dynamical system over distributions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s…

Not my typical story. Learn about the fascinating Namaqua Sandgrouse and how they transport water to their young many miles away from the water holes. Big thanks to my collaborator Lorna J. Gibson! Paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs… Johns Hopkins Engineering Johns Hopkins University The Royal Society

I saw this remarkable creature once too! Couldn't believe my eyes - yes this recording was taken in real time... look at these crazy shape changes - any biophysicists want to come up with a 'mechanism' for how this works?? #biomechanics #parasites

Alien math.

Dropped plastic bottles containing swirling water bounce significantly less than bottles containing standing still water after impacting the floor Letter: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/1… Focus: physics.aps.org/articles/v16/1…

:)

Live Fourier transform of the #BigDiamond model. Amazing! #BraggYourPattern #IUCr2023

How does the cytoskeleton manage its role in cargo transport? Check out this preprint on arXiv.org, by Nimisha Krishnan, Niranjan Sarpangala, Maria Gamez, AjayGopinathan and Jennifer L Ross. doi.org/10.48550/arXiv…

One of my favourite letters, insightful & humane, from Richard Feynman to a former student who was having a rough time I was reflecting on it as an argument in favour of scope insensitivity, or even in favour of smaller problems:

The way Federer plays tennis like that’s what he was put on Earth to do will never cease to glue me to the screen, even when he's 80 and the equivalent of Rod Laver in young people's minds 🎥 Tennis Legend

Fun visualization: take 10x10 random matrix and visualize eigenvalue trajectories you get by rotating this matrix by theta in 0..2 Pi in some fixed direction. Now vary this direction smoothly

@KhonaMikail That's the thing, eigenvalues repel. Here's what a single trajectory looks like

Review article: "Self-Organized Pattern Formation in Geological Soft Matter" (by many authors): arxiv.org/abs/2412.18999 Note: There are also lots of great pictures in this article.

📢 PRFluids Editors' suggestion: How does a droplet split between two fibers? At specific angles, near-complete transfer from one fiber to the other is possible, highlighting how soft metamaterials can be harnessed to control liquid transport. Read more at go.aps.org/40jYON0