John Bridgewater’s name is intimately associated with granular matter and chemical engineering, and it is an honor to be able to offer a few personal remarks in this symposium. The granular matter domain is practically important and scientifically rich. The “practically important” aspect is old; the “scientifically rich” aspect is new. Granular matter is an example of a system where interactions among elementary building blocks—granules, in this case—does not give a glimpse of the behavior of the global system itself. Forced granular matter has become a paradigm of collective systems far from equilibrium and of complex systems, systems consisting of a large number of nonlinearly interacting parts.
Discover the world of nexus thinking
In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.
