Knitting Ripples

NC State students have probably seen Dr. Mary Elting and me hard at work during colloquium … knitting. Recently, she and I sat down with the folks at the brand-new journal Patterns to write up a physics pattern with a knitting twist: how non-Gaussian curvature arises during knitting, from much the same ingredients as crystalline defects. You can read about the topic (and get knitting instructions) here.

This work was inspired by a recent movement among physicists to try and capture the topology and mechanics of knit materials. Even the New York Times caught wind of the phenomenon: Knitting is Coding!