He did a Froome!

Black-and-white portrait of Harriet Brooks shown from the shoulders up. She faces slightly to the right with a neutral expression. Her hair is light-colored, loosely styled and swept back from her forehead. She wears a high-collared dark dress with a fitted neck and smooth fabric. The background is plain and light, with no visible objects or decorations.

Harriet Brooks was one of Canada's first female nuclear physicists.
Sir Ernest Rutherford said she was an equal of Marie Curie.
She co-discovered radon and helped lay the foundations of nuclear science.
Then she left her career when she was 29.
This is her story.

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📢The nomination deadline for the 2026 Soft Matter Lectureship is fast approaching!

‼️Deadline: 30th April 2026

Don't miss your chance to nominate an early career researcher who has made major contributions to soft matter research.

Learn more about the award: lnkd.in/eMhN7bEW

Studying Nature is like hard and stuff. Let's just make it up instead! Can I have some money for my garbage AI now?

A smiling bald man stand next to a fantastic young researcher. They both stand in front of a green/blue banner on which "welcome to the splash district" is written.

It is always great to run into former grad students in the wild. Here is hoping that there perminant positions for great people like this in the future!

Tonight from 6:45 - 8:30 pm we will have our annual DSOFT business meeting and celebration! Can't wait to catch up with y'all ✨

Come to SPLASHY industry panel to learn about industry careers in soft matter, biological and polymer physics!! Happening today 3 - 4 pm in Meeting Room 210/212

Starting soon, come find us in the Bellco Foyer!

What's a soft matter physicist to do at the APS Global Physics Summit?🤔 We've got some ideas, so we've put together a list of DSOFT activities, starting with Squishy Science Sunday today at Denver Museum of Nature and Science!

The Women+ in Physics Canada Conference Steering Committee is seeking proposals to host the 2027 conference. Aimed at physics graduate students and early career professionals, this conference provides an opportunity for participants to present their research, support each other and network. ⚛️🧪👩‍🔬🇨🇦

Are you ready for the APS Global Physics Summit? For all you soft matter lovers, we’ve gathered a list of the DSOFT invited sessions below. For the full GPS schedule, see summit.aps.org/schedule/

Squishy Science Sunday is back at the Global Physics Summit! Join us for hands-on activities about physics, including the physics of slime, sand, and cotton candy! Find us at Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Use code APSSQUISHY26 for a discount on general admission tickets!

A gray shorthair cat at the moment of release upside down, with its tongue out looking derpy

A new paper on falling cat science came out and I just have to draw people's attention to this image

We are excited to present the finalists for this year's DSOFT Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award! Join us in celebrating the work of these exceptional soft matter physics students, who will present their work in a special DSOFT Awards Session at the 2026 APS Global Physics Summit.

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

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Clearly this is the littlest hobo.

A fire flickers in a simple fireplace set in white granet at the end of a coffee table surrounded by chairs.

Appropriate for this evening in Blacksburg.

Architectural swarms for responsive façades and creative expression Architectural swarms fuse swarm robotics and architectural façades to create spaces that adapt to people and the environment.

Thrilled to see our work, titled "Architectural swarms for responsive façades and creative expression", published in Science Robotics @science.org !

Huge congrats to Merihan Alhafnawi, who led this project.

Read more: science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.ady7233

Map of NATO countries by number of those who died in Afghanistan answering America's call to aid following the 9/11 attacks. 90 French soldiers died out of 23,200 who fought in defense of the United States.

Our new paper (with @biotay.bsky.social) is out and on the cover story of @currentbiology.bsky.social !!!! Veronika, a Carinthian mountain cow flexibly uses a “multi-purpose tool” to scratch herself. A video and more information will follow in the comments.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Iryna Kaluyzhna, Ukrainian beauty series Red Bird, 2019

This artwork is a part of the Art of Ukraine fundraiser. All proceeds will go towards supporting Ukrainian efforts 🇺🇦

Buy now

Impact and Energy Absorption with Sticky Crumpled Matter This study shows experiments and simulations of the low-speed impact of a solid sphere into a sticky crumpled sheet. The manuscript details how the added energy absorption mechanism, due to the inter...

Great to see Wathsala Jayawardana's last thesis work published. She was looking at how thin crumpled sheets absorb energy during low speed impact. Fun to think about why we like crumpled paper when we have to move!

doi.org/10.1002/adem...

A knee in blue jeans and a beer in a green bottle are seen in the foreground. A small fire burns in a fireplace. Beyond is a pile of wood on the edge of a fenced garden. On the fence hangs brown decaying vines. In the background you see some wood fences.

Autumn

APS Meeting abstracts for Denver deadline was extend to October 31! Consider submitting to the "Engineered Biopolymers and Living Materials" focus session organized by Melody Morris and me. We invite abstracts covering research using polymer physics for engineered biopolymers and living materials.

Beware giving this site your unpublished data Users noticed the website had fake testimonials and a domain name registered seemingly overnight.

The dark truth behind FormatMyPaper.com

All Royal Society journal content is freely available this week for open access week @royalsocietypublishing.org

Just popped into the Royal Institution for a coffee, to discover they have a lovely display on benzene to mark the bicentenary of Faraday's discovery of it. Here are his notes, his paper, and one of his first samples. Glorious.

Polymers Tame Turbulent Flow New experiments show that adding polymers to a fluid can reduce energy dissipation by suppressing small eddies.

Adding polymers to a liquid speeds up its flow through a pipe by reducing the frictional drag at the pipe’s inner surface. Now researchers have found that the polymers also suppress eddy formation and thus reduce the loss of flow energy to heat.

Ha ha, jokes on them! As a scientist, I don't own the rights to anything I publish!

Well don't I feel stupid