Series: Mathematics Colloquium

Date: Thursday, April 4, 2002

Time: 4:30 - 5:30 PM

Place: 102 McAllister Building

Host: Chun Liu

Refreshments: 4:00 - 4:30 PM, in 212 McAllister

Speaker: Shankar Venkataramani, University of Chicago

Title: What Can We Learn From a Crumpled Sheet?

Abstract: 

Using a crumpled elastic sheet as an example, we will discuss a
variety of issues related to multiple-scale behaviors in nonconvex
variational problems.  Along the way, we will discover some surprising
and deep connections between this problem, weak convergence methods
for nonlinear partial differential equations, Harmonic maps, Isometric
immersions and Gromov's theory of convex integration.  The talk will
be an extremely accessible introduction to this circle of ideas, and I
will not assume any prior knowledge of these topics.