University of Wisconsin, Madison

Title: Energy Consumption and Climate Change

Abstract: What happens underneath your feet when you stand on a beach? This talk will show that the forces that support your weight are distributed very differently in sand than in a ``normal'' solid. Forces much larger than the mean occur, but are exponentially rare. These force inhomogeneities can be understood using an exactly solvable statistical model, in which the inhomogeneities in the force distribution arise because of variations in the contact angles and the constraints imposed by the force balance on
each bead in the pile.