• Akrap Ana

• Akrap Ana

Patterns appear everywhere around us, from vast galaxies, or intricate shapes of snowflakes, to coffee stains on paper, ripples on sand dunes, or stripes on a zebra, and even spreading of a virus in a community. These patterns emerge spontaneously at all levels, through self-organization in nature. Many of them are universal: spirals, spots, branches, honeycombs, stripes. In this course we will explore how patterns and organized complexity of form can be created by simple physical laws—how simplicity creates complexity. Among other topics, we will cover bubbles, waves, branches, fractals, grains, and breakdowns.

We will cover a broad theme of physics of complexity, looking at how simple equations can give rise to beautiful and complex patterns. We will consider simple models to explain the patterns, coupled to simple experiments that you can do in class or at home. At the end of the course you will be familiar with some notions of this rapidly expanding field where physics meets other sciences.

Pattern Formation: An Introduction to Methods , Rebecca Hoyle , Cambridge U. Press, New York, 2006.
The self-made tapistry, Philip Ball, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999

Seminar at the end of the course, and attendance.