The Lutetium Project's video: Walking grains

To a statistical physicist, a flock of birds is just like... a very peculiar liquid. 🐦 To better understand this analogy, Olivier Dauchot, PhD, mimicks their behavior in his lab... with walking grains! Confused yet? ↓ More info and links in the video description↓ ----------------------------------------­----------------------------- LINKS: French version: https://youtu.be/DPmXvM0DfqA Subscribe to the channel : https://youtube.com/thelutetiumproject Follow us on Twitter : https://twitter.com/TheLuProject Visit our website: https://www.lutetium.paris/en ----------------------------------------­----------------------------- MORE ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE : Olivier Dauchot is a Belgian-born physicist, who graduated from the Ponts et Chaussées engineering school before doing a PhD in physics at Université Pierre et Marie Curie. He started doing research at the Saclay center of CEA, where he worked on dynamical systems, turbulence, and granular materials. Since 2011, he is a CNRS researcher (Directeur de Recherche) and works at the Gulliver lab, at ESPCI, where he started experiments on non-living active matter like the walking grains. There, he led the Collective Effects in Soft Matter (EC2M) team, an interdisciplinary team that worked on topics ranging from liquid crystals in confined geometries, to producing synthetic platelets, or avalanches of micrometric particles. At the meeting point of experiments and theory, Olivier Dauchot (now head of the Gulliver lab) currently works on the solid phases of active matter, the glass transition of liquids, and the rheology of granulars. Olivier Dauchot on Twitter: https://twitter.com/odauchot?lang=fr The Gulliver lab: https://www.gulliver.espci.fr/?-home- ----------------------------------------­----------------------------- FEATURED ARTICLES: Julien Deseigne, Olivier Dauchot, and Hugues Chaté, Collective Motion of Vibrated Polar Disks, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 098001 (2010), https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.098001 G. Briand and O. Dauchot, Crystallization of Self-Propelled Hard Discs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 098004 (2016), https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.098004 Guillaume Briand, Michael Schindler, and Olivier Dauchot, Spontaneously Flowing Crystal of Self-Propelled Particles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 208001 (2018), https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.208001 ----------------------------------------­----------------------------- STRUCTURE OF THE VIDEO: 00:00 Collective motion: a physics problem? 01:30 Non-living experiments of collective motion 02:19 Theoretical models 03:45 Thermodynamic equilibrium 04:43 How to make an active particle 07:16 From single walkers to collective motion 08:45 Velocity alignment mechanisms 10:48 Crowding active particles 11:20 The crystallisation transition 12:14 Crystallization of active particles 14:40 Towards living systems? 15:49 Conclusion ----------------------------------------­----------------------------- CREDITS: Host: Mathias Kasiulis Researcher: Olivier Dauchot Writers: Mathias Kasiulis, Guillaume Durey Director: Hoon Kwon Animator: Benjamin Alardin Editor: Guillaume Durey Sound mixer: Valentin Zorgnotti Studio, visual identity: Juliette Nier Theme music: Pierre David Production: Guillaume Durey, Mathias Kasiulis This video was shot on November 11th, 2018. ----------------------------------------­----------------------------- The Lutetium Project is a PSL students’ initiative conducted as part of IDEX ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL and funded by: PSL Research University – https://www.univ-psl.fr ESPCI Paris – https://www.espci.fr Espace des sciences Pierre-Gilles de Gennes – https://www.espgg.org ESPCI Alumni – https://espci.alumni.paris le Fonds ESPCI Paris – https://www.espci.fr/fr/nous-soutenir/le-fonds-de-l-espci/ ----------------------------------------­-----------------------------