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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Granular materials exhibit large spatial variations in their response to external loading, whether static or dynamic. As such, continuum models of properties such as the shear modulus and sound speed often fail. A promising alternative is to build an understanding of bulk behaviors from measurements at the particle scale, by analogy with the statistical mechanics of thermal systems. I will describe experiments in which we utilize photoelastic particles and piezo-embedded 'smart' particles to explore how two familiar properties -- temperature equilibration and densities of states -- might arise in this new context.
