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Lecture, Barnard's Inn Hall, Tuesday, 15 Sep 2026 - 18:00
Cracking the Whip: Strings, Chains and Dinosaurs
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A cracking whip is invariably surprising. What generates such a stunning sound? In this lecture, through simple demonstrations of whips and chains on a pulley, Professor Goriely builds simple models to explain the extreme acceleration that takes place in the motion of ropes.
In particular, he shows how these models have solutions that blow up to infinity and learns, like the dinosaurs did, how to tame these infinities to produce a stunning crack.
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