Etienne Guyon

Benoit Roman

Jose Bico

Etienne Reyssat

The hidden elegance in everyday objects and physical mechanisms, from crumpled paper to sandcastles. Hidden Wonders focuses on the objects that populate our everyday life--crumpled paper, woven fabric, a sand pile--but looks at them with a physicist's eye, revealing a hidden elegance in mundane physical mechanisms. In six chapters--Builders, Creating Shapes, Building with Threads, From Sand to Glass, Matter in Motion, and Fractures--the authors present brief stories, set in locales ranging from the Eiffel Tower to a sandcastle, that illustrate the little wonders hidden in the ordinary. A simple experiment that readers can perform at home concludes each story. More than 200 illustrations bring the stories to life.

The Subtle Dialogue Between Physics and Elegance

Hidden Wonders

Jean-Yves Delenne

Farhang Radjai

Explaining the science contained in a simple assembly of grains—the most abundant form of matter present on Earth. Granular media—composed of vast amounts of grains, consolidated or not—constitute the most abundant form of solid matter on Earth. Granular materials assemble in disordered configurations scientists often liken to a bag of marbles. Made of macroscopic particles rather than molecules, they defy the standard scheme of classification in terms of solid, liquid, and gas. Granular materials provide a model relevant to various domains of research, including engineering, physics, and biology. William Blake famously wished “To See a World in a Grain of Sand”; in this book, pioneering researchers in granular matter explain the science hidden behind simple grains, shedding light on collective behavior in disordered settings in general. The authors begin by describing the single grain with its different origins, shapes, and sizes, then examine grains in piled or stacked form. They explain the packing fraction of granular media, a crucial issue that bears on the properties displayed in practical applications; explore small-scale deformations in piles of disordered grains, with particular attention to friction; and present theories of various modes of disorder. Along the way, they discuss such concepts as force chains, arching effects, wet grains, sticky contacts, and inertial effects. Drawing on recent numerical simulations as well as classical concepts developed in physics and mechanics, the book offers an accessible introduction to a rapidly developing field.

The Science of Granular Materials

Built on Sand

Innocent Mutabazi

Jose Eduardo Wesfreid

The impact of Benard's discovery on 20th century physics is crucial to any modern research area such as fluid dynamics, nonlinear dynamics, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, just to name a few. This centenary review shows the broad scope and development including modern applications, edited and written by experts in the field.

Henri Bénard Centenary Review

Dynamics of Spatio-Temporal Cellular Structures

Jean-Pierre Hulin

Catalin D. Mitescu

Luc Petit

This second edition of Physical Hydrodynamics is a deeply enriched version of a classical textbook on fluid dynamics. It retains the same pedagogical spirit, based on the authors' experience of teaching university students in the physical sciences, and emphasizes an experimental (inductive) approach rather than the more formal approach found in many textbooks in the field. Today the field is more widely open to other experimental sciences: materials,environmental, life, and earth sciences, as well as the engineering sciences. Representative examples from these fields have been included where possible, while retaining a general presentation in each case.

Physical Hydrodynamics

Jean-Paul Troadec

Quelles sont les mille et une façons d'empiler des oranges ? Comment expliquer les mouvements des billes dans leur sac ou ceux des grains de blé dans un silo ? Pourquoi les dunes de sable ne s'effondrent-elles pas ? Comment s'écoule une avalanche ? Entre l'infiniment petit et l'infiniment grand, tout un domaine s'ouvre aujourd'hui aux sciences les plus avancées, celui d'objets et de phénomènes extrêmement complexes qui peuplent notre quotidien. Étienne Guyon, ancien directeur du Palais de la Découverte, est directeur de l'École normale supérieure et professeur à l'université de Paris-Sud. Jean-Paul Troadec est professeur à l'université de Rennes et chercheur au sein du « Groupe matière condensée et matériaux », associé au CNRS.

Du sac de billes au tas de sable

Etienne Guyon

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