{"id":66372,"date":"2018-02-01T11:18:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T15:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=66372"},"modified":"2023-10-26T13:50:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T17:50:32","slug":"bending-is-beautiful-engs-doug-holmes-studies-thin-unstable-structures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2018\/02\/01\/bending-is-beautiful-engs-doug-holmes-studies-thin-unstable-structures\/","title":{"rendered":"Bending Is Beautiful: ENG’s Doug Holmes studies thin, unstable structures"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Moran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Douglas
Douglas Holmes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Douglas Holmes<\/a> remembers when he fell in love with bendy things. He was a graduate student in physics, and he wanted to understand why a sheet of paper curves into a loop when you push the ends together. \u201cI started looking,\u201d he says, \u201cand the math you needed to describe this bent piece of paper was just\u2014I couldn\u2019t believe how hard it was. I was like, \u2018This is insane. It\u2019s just paper. How hard can it be to predict the shape of a bent piece of paper?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Pretty hard, it turns out. And Holmes loved the challenge. \u201cI was drawn to it because it was so simple to see and so hard to describe or predict,\u201d he says. \u201cI started seeing thin structures and instabilities everywhere, and I got really curious about understanding them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holmes, a College of Engineering assistant professor of mechanical engineering<\/a>\u00a0and materials science and engineering<\/a>, is now an expert in bendy, squishy, and unstable structures. He spoke to BU <\/em>Today<\/em> about his fascination with instability\u2014how structures change shape under stress, for better or worse\u2014and how soft materials may help solve some very hard problems. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Read full story at BU Today<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Douglas Holmes remembers when he fell in love with bendy things. He was a graduate student in physics, and he wanted to understand why a sheet of paper curves into a loop when you push the ends together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,909,252,908,245],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145785,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66372\/revisions\/145785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}