Mantis shrimp and trap-jaw ants are under close scrutiny in Mark Ilton\u2019s Physics of Soft Matter (PoSM) Lab at Harvey Mudd College. Researchers are studying the biomechanics of the animals\u2019 elastically driven movements and are developing a flexible modeling framework to simulate these movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur new model enables flexible definitions of the main mechanical components of these systems: springs, motors and latches,\u201d says Ilton, who recently published a paper with his students in Integrative Organismal Biology<\/em>. \u201cWe provided a derivation of our model and then used it to investigate the role of muscle dynamics in these systems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andres Cook ’21, Kaanthi Pandhigunta ’23, Mason Acevedo ’22, Adam Walker ’22, Rosalie Didcock ’22, Jackson Castro ’22 and Declan O\u2019Neill ’23 are Ilton\u2019s coauthors on the paper, \u201cA Tunable, Simplified Model for Biological Latch Mediated Spring Actuated Systems.\u201d \u201cUsing our model, we found that two dynamic effects of muscle\u2014the muscle force-velocity trade-off and muscle activation\u2014have important consequences for understanding the biomechanics of these systems,\u201d Ilton says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The students were involved in all aspects of this work. Cook was part of the original conceptualization of the research and the initial development of the model, and the rest of the PoSM team performed further development of the model and created freely available software during remote-only summer research. All of the students were involved with writing and revising the manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their work was supported by the Harvey Mudd College Physics Summer Research Fund, the N. Sprague III Experiential Learning Fund and the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mantis shrimp and trap-jaw ants are under close scrutiny in Mark Ilton\u2019s Physics of Soft Matter (PoSM) Lab at Harvey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":11414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,24,30],"class_list":["post-9967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","category-physics","category-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11411,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions\/11411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}