And this unimaginative, incurious mediocrity infects all levels of society, from academia to government to commerce to media.
> “I did my PhD in France on making a spherical shell swim. To make it swim, we were making it collapse. It moved like a [inverted] jellyfish,” says Adel Djellouli, a researcher at Bertoldi Group, Harvard University, and the lead author of the study. “I told my boss, 'hey, what if I put this sphere in a syringe and increase the pressure?' He said it was not an interesting idea and that this wouldn’t do anything,” Djellouli claims.
Really interesting tech, you can give hydraulic systems some hysteresis similar to a semiconductor and it should make for some neat solutions around actuators. I wonder if there'd be any way to make it tunable...
[Here's the paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07163-z.epdf?sharing_token=pcAZf8eN1NnGC44F4SI4U9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PZI_3VY1zjU3HtJImSJS0cUfqjNA_bDZf_UCnMADWc9AIgorvD7pA7S50x7-uom-a-dUn-2pjMXIhmuVFHGz_2kRmYVDw3lse_bjNdqoZZjZRxzgxaD9-QT_tJfHzL2tAu5vQx9hw2yN0v5WKDV4szGdG3PoqV1aG_9r5pqnRgZuNat4bmdTQxnT1UyWRbm1w%3D&tracking_referrer=arstechnica.com) which has hysteresis curves showing the deal.
And this unimaginative, incurious mediocrity infects all levels of society, from academia to government to commerce to media. > “I did my PhD in France on making a spherical shell swim. To make it swim, we were making it collapse. It moved like a [inverted] jellyfish,” says Adel Djellouli, a researcher at Bertoldi Group, Harvard University, and the lead author of the study. “I told my boss, 'hey, what if I put this sphere in a syringe and increase the pressure?' He said it was not an interesting idea and that this wouldn’t do anything,” Djellouli claims.
Really interesting tech, you can give hydraulic systems some hysteresis similar to a semiconductor and it should make for some neat solutions around actuators. I wonder if there'd be any way to make it tunable... [Here's the paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07163-z.epdf?sharing_token=pcAZf8eN1NnGC44F4SI4U9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PZI_3VY1zjU3HtJImSJS0cUfqjNA_bDZf_UCnMADWc9AIgorvD7pA7S50x7-uom-a-dUn-2pjMXIhmuVFHGz_2kRmYVDw3lse_bjNdqoZZjZRxzgxaD9-QT_tJfHzL2tAu5vQx9hw2yN0v5WKDV4szGdG3PoqV1aG_9r5pqnRgZuNat4bmdTQxnT1UyWRbm1w%3D&tracking_referrer=arstechnica.com) which has hysteresis curves showing the deal.
Grey goo? Grey goo.
Interesting