December 2011 - McMaster Department of Materials Science and ...

VOL 2. ISSUE 2. MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING NEWSLETTER JANUARY 9, 2012
MATERIALS AND NATURE TAKES THE
STAGE AT THE 2011 GRADUATE
STUDENT CONFERENCE
By DAVID ROSSOUW
The next time you find yourself strolling down the dimly lit
3rd floor corridors in the north wing of JHE, you might notice,
opposite Dr. Hoyt’s newly published Nature Materials news
article [1] posted on the journal bulletin board, new photos put
on display of the 2nd Annual McMaster Materials Graduate
Student Conference (MMGSC). The Royal Botanical Gardens
provided an exquisite backdrop to the proceedings on August
the 17th, the weather was in full co-operation and the gardens
were in full bloom in harmony with the day’s theme: Materials
and nature.
Figure 1: Co-organisers Steffi Woo and Samaneh Alibiegi begin
the conference with a few opening remarks
Following the formal welcome from conference coorganisers
Steffi Woo and Samaneh Alibeigi [2] and the Department
Chair Nik Provatas, the day launched with an onslaught
from the Eastern Bloc. Professors Dmitri Malakhov
and Marek Niewczas wowed the audience with their presentations
on Misleading Common Sense and Lattice Imperfections
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and the Role They Play in Material Strength respectively. Both
speakers went out of their way to explain concepts in everyday
language, Dmitri even removed his own belt and had a student
tie it around his head to push home a point that ironically now
escapes me.
Figure 2: Dmitri in full flight in “Misleading common sense”
The limited supply of time and space demanded that subsequent
presentations were to given in parallel. Students Paige
Byers [3] and Mickey Chan gave fresh and inspiring talks
on Biomimetics: Use What Yo’ Mama Gave You and Carbon
Nanotubes, Night Vision and Stealth Coating. At the
same time in the room opposite, Rameez Ashraf and Glendon
Brown, gave excellent presentations on topics familiar to
them, on A Brief History of Tennis and Tennis Equipment, and
Sport’s Hottest Rising Star: The Materials Engineer. The list

goes on [4]. For me, one of the day’s memorable moments
occurred in the afternoon coffee break. Feihong Nan delighted
the audience with her musical talent playing the Zither, a traditional
Chinese instrument. The authentic sounds from the instrument
were complemented by the soft patter of water falling
from a distant fountain. The musical experience was complete
with the recognizable Western tune Jingle Bells.
The conference wrapped up with Engineering Physics’
John Preston. His talk on The Role of Epitaxy in Nanotechnology
inspired a wave of questions from the audience.
Mahshid Fathi won the very competitive battle for this year’s
best speaker award for her talk on Research and Teamwork.
Although in retrospect, all participants were rewarded with a
full day of presentations, ideas, food, entertainment, materials
and nature.
Figure 3: Feihong Nan plays the zither in the afternoon break
Co-organisers Steffi Woo and Samaneh Alibeigi were delighted
with how the conference went. “Hearing the oohh’s
and aahh’s of the attendees as they were entering the conference
hall and the serene courtyard” was one of Steffi’s
favourite moments of the day, “A lot of people were not familiar
with the Royal Botanical Gardens, so it was a little unexpected.”
Samaneh was impressed with the variety of fields
represented at the conference, “I could see the bonding that
Materials Science and Engineering had with different fields
such as physics, chemistry, mechanical, civil, medicine, sport
and art.” When asked what was learned from organising the
conference, Steffi reflects In the process of getting people to
give a talk at the conference or display some of their outside
talents, I learned a bit about how they spend their time outside
of their research, what they do for fun. So many of them are
so talented in music and the arts, it is really great!
The organisers would like to thank the Materials department,
in particular, Nik Provatas, who inspired the idea of a
student organized conference. Also many thanks go to Jane,
Diana and Nanci for their guidance and patience, and Ed for
technical support.
[1] Hoyt, J. Metallic alloys: All particles are equal. Nature
Materials 10, 652653 (2011).
[2] Conference organisers: Steffi Woo, Samaneh Alibeigi,
Stephen Jones and David Rossouw.
[3] Former best speaker award winner.
[4] A list of all the talks and abstracts can be
found at http://mselxoff.mcmaster.ca/party/
MEGSC2011/index.html
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MAC MSE PHYSICS CORNER: REAL
FRACTALS AND SOME APPLICATIONS
By JONATHAN STOLLE
In the last article on fractals, we introduced fractals and
a description of fractal dimensions. These objects (geometric
fractals) might seem rather simplistic to be of any use in real
problems for a couple of reasons:
i) they are geometrically very regular
ii) they are assume that the pattern is repeated to infinitely
small scales (which would suggest having a self-similar pattern
smaller than an atom, for example)
In contrast to geometric fractals, the most useful fractals
are statistically self-similar (or self-affine) ones, where various
geometric properties taken into account in a statistical (random)
sense can be related to power laws over a limited range
of scales (i.e., assigning a fractal dimension to an object over a
certain range of scales). Some properties of infinite fractals relate
to these objects very well (even if the self-similarity only
happens over a scale of 100 or so). (See [1] for more details.)
Perhaps the most famous example of a self-similar object is
the coastline, whose self-similar behaviour was originally observed
by Lewis Fry Richardson and later described by Mandelbrot
in relation to fractals. Different coastlines have different
fractal dimensions; some are very tortuous, like Norway,
while others are smooth, like South Africa, which has a fractal
dimension of 1 [2]. In Fig. 1, how to estimate the coastline
of Great Britain is shown. If the same physical processes are
responsible for creating coastlines in various places on earth,
one might wonder how this can be accounted for. The causes
for this have recently been looked at again in Physical Review
E; see [4] for a synopsis. One way is by accepting the claim
that we are only looking at statistically self-similar fractals, so
different parts might exhibit very different behaviour, but there
is more.
Figure 1: Coastline of Great Britain [3]
Instead of looking at curves/surfaces as just isolated geometric
sets, one can look at these objects as sets embedded
in a higher-dimensional function function (for example, level

curves of a surface). Each level curve can then have a fractal
dimension associated with it. If it causes some discomfort
that the functions are very irregular, a good example function
displaying fractal behaviour is the Weierstrass function
(In Fig. 2). Objects in which all level curves display the same
fractal dimension are monofractals and the generalization in
which different level curves have different fractal dimensions
are known as multifractals.
Figure 2: Weierstrass Function [5]
Clouds, the structure of foams, fluid turbulence, and stock
market prices can all to some degree be described by these
general fractal objects (Fig. 3). A little closer to home, you
can find a number of applications in materials science: 2nd order
phase transitions (e.g., spinodal decomposition) can lead to
critical opalescence, flocculation, and fractal dendrites. There
are also applications in biology, when looking at shape of the
kidney or the shape of neuronal connections.
(a) Stock Prices Indices
(do these not look like Weierstrass functions?) [6]
(b) simulated clouds where fractality is
promoted by air turbulence [7]
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Figure 3: Practical uses of fractals
Before the next article, why not look at a bunch of satellite
images and try to identify fractal patterns in them? In the next
article, I will mention more about the mathematical properties
of these objects and how they relate to chaos.
[1] H. Juergens, H. O. Peitgen, and D. Saupe. Chaos and
Fractals: New Frontiers of Science. Springer-Verlag, New
York, 1992.
[2] Benot Mandelbrot, 1967, How Long Is the Coast of
Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension.
Science, New Series, Vol. 156, No. 3775. (May
5, 1967), pp. 636-638. doi:10.1126/science.156.3775.636
or http://users.math.yale.edu/˜bbm3/web_
pdfs/howLongIsTheCoastOfBritain.pdf
[3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Britain-fractal-coastline-combined.
jpg (Arrived by clicking on various links from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Long_
Is_the_Coast_of_Britain%3F_Statistical_
Self-Similarity_and_Fractional_Dimension
)
[4] SynopsisPhysics Stormy seas. http://physics.
aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevE.84.
016102
[5] Weierstrass function: http://mathworld.
wolfram.com/WeierstrassFunction.html
[6] StockMarket:http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Stock_market
[7] Fractal Clouds: StockMarket:http://davis.
wpi.edu/˜matt/courses/fractals/clouds.
html
THE UNDERGRAD UPDATE (OCTOBER
2011)
By BEN DESCOULDS
The start of the year has brought new and improved department
events from the Materials Council. The first event, Materials
Department Welcome Back Night, was a huge success!
Dr. Provatas led off the night welcoming everyone back and
the rest of the professors introduced themselves and wished all
the undergrads the best of luck in the coming year. A short presentation
announced the new undergrad labs and study rooms
in the basement of JHE. Dr. Zurob finished off the night by
getting everyone excited about the France Exchange. When
the pizza came out, the upper years were able to share their
experiences with the new 2nd years and really let them know
how fun and awesome it is to be part of Materials Engineering.
Thanks to everyone who came out, it was a great night. Special
thanks to Diana for organizing the event. If you were not
able to make it out, there will be many more events happening
during the rest of the year.

Upcoming Events:
• UBC Night October 26th
• Materials T-Shirt Sales Coming soon
• Industry Night November 24th
• End of term Buffet December 2nd
The Materials Softball team, Petric’s Peritectics, started off
the season with a bang! They won their pre-season game on
the strength of three homeruns by Captain Kyle Cormier. With
a complete team effort, they continued their success in the first
game of the season and demolished their opponent by 20 runs.
The second game ended in a loss, but highlights of the game included
Pierre Le-Dreff Kerwin’s acrobatic catch in centre field
and Jordan McClanahan’s diving tag at second base. Game 3
was played in the freezing cold and rain, but the team battled
through the elements and came out with the win. The offense
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was firing on all cylinders and Brycklin Wilson was a defensive
star at first base. Mary Gallerneault also gunned an opposing
player out at second base from right field. Special mention
goes out to Kevin Crooks’ incredible batting average of 1.000
on the season. Petric’s Peritectics are looking to continue their
excellent season into the second half!
MATERIALS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
By AHMED SALMAN
The worlds of engineering and fashion design have traditionally
been thought of as being completely independent
and mutually exclusive. The delicate and feathery chiffons
and satins could not be further away in texture, appearance,
or fabrication from the rugged, invulnerable metals and steels.
However, in their quest for developing the hottest new trends,
fashion designers are stumbling upon some of the most notorious
and widely used engineering materials, and are using them
in ingenuous ways to create masterful showpieces.
In the 1927 German silent film Metropolis, an inventor
with the intentions of destroying the world transforms the leading
female character, Maria, into a robot. This film represented
one of the first appearances of a robot-human hybrid. Noted
as a source of inspiration for many sci-fi writers and costume
designers, as well as fashion designers throughout the ages,
Walter Schultze-Mittendorf designed Marias bodysuit out of a
“plastic wood” which was molded to perfectly match the actresss
proportions. It was then painted with a mixture of silver
and bronze to achieve a metallic appearance. This robotic inspiration
appeared on the runways first in 1995 when iconic
French fashion designer Thierry Mugler designed a bodysuit
of chrome plated fiberglass with clear polymethyl acrylate
“cut-outs” strategically placed to compliment the female figure.
While these creations are mostly viewed as elaborate yet
unwearable art pieces, they have inspired many of today’s top
fashion designers who have been very successful in designing
ready to wear garments out of these unconventional materials.
A great example of this is a corset made of coiled aluminum
designed by late British designer Alexander McQueen. The
risk-taking designer also created a more provocative anatomically
correct aluminum corset inspired by the human spine and
rib cage.
Designers have also chosen to work with more difficult engineering
materials such as ceramics and glasses. Beijing artist
Li Xiaofeng and Japanese artist Makiko Nakamura were both
inspired by traditional ceramics in their designs. While far
from being ready to wear, these spectacular showpieces leave
much to be desired from the world of ceramics.

Figure 1: Schultze-Mittendorf’s Maria.
Other designers have collaborated with engineers and scientists
to create altogether new materials with potential uses
in the fashion industry. In 1995, Dr. Manel Torres, a fashion
designer from the Imperial College of London developed
a colloidal suspension of cotton fibers dissolved in a solvent
which allows the cotton to be sprayed from an aerosol can.
Once sprayed, the solvent evaporates and a layer of cotton perfectly
matching the persons silhouette remains. Such a design
is revolutionary in concept as it conjures up the ideas of instant
fashion and reusable material; the cotton can be dissolved once
again in the solvent and used to create a different article of
clothing. In addition, it allows for the incorporation of scents
and dyes for versatility.
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Figure 2: Mugler’s Robot remodeled in gold.
Figure 3: “Coiled” by Shaun Leanne for Alexander McQueen,
Aluminum.
Another spectacular creation is that of Suzanne Lee, a London
based fashion designer who has been able to “grow” her
own clothes. By fermenting a sugar syrup mixture to create
cellulose, she has been successful in creating reusable fabric

that dissolves in water. While some obvious issues are presented,
the potential of this design process, which is still in the
early stages of development, is staggering. As clothes go out
of style at the end of a season, clothing retailers can use dmod
pieces as the raw materials for creating new trendy clothes.
Figure 4: Bodice by Nakamura for McQueen, Ceramic.
On a different yet equally remarkable note, another design
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concept that presents tremendous opportunities for the future
of the fashion industry is the idea of coating cotton fibers with
carbon nanotubes. Engineers have been successful in creating
fabric from these coated fibers and have found them to be electrically
conductive, which has allowed for endless opportunities
of functional design. Antibodies have been incorporated
within the nanotubes, which detect blood and could have applications
in military wear. In addition, these antibodies are
capable of detecting allergens and could signal warnings for
the wearer.
Truly, the opportunities for collaboration between engineering
and fashion design are limitless. From bio-inspired
garments to recycled eco-friendly designs, and even clothes
that reflect the wearers emotional state, the future of fabric design
is strongly linked to advances in materials science. It has
really never been more fashionable to be a materials scientist.
Figure 5: Biobomber Jacket by Suzanne Lee, Cellulose.