Parking, Puckering, and Peeling in Small Soft Systems

Abstract

The field of soft matter has been described as ``an amalgamation of methods and concepts, [...] an interdisciplinary offspring'' emerging from the intersection of physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, materials, and mathematics. Nevertheless, a unifying characteristic of soft matter systems can be identified as reconfigurability, due to a keen response to external forces. Here we examine four soft systems: colloidal particles assembling randomly onto a thin wire, bird species assembling in a tropical forest, microtubules buckled using optical tweezers, and elastic filaments (microtubules) or sheets (graphene) exhibiting rate-independent adhesion hysteres in peeling.