Soot, the by-product of combustion, that smoky, black crap from chimneys, power plants and the inside of the tail pipe of my roadster, what scientist would ever bother to study soot? As a “particle physicist”, that’s what I do, and I find that soot has mysteries and beauties that can entertain any curiosity. In this talk I will describe some of my researches into soot and other aggregate structures; an unlikely journey of discovery to find fractal structures with non-Euclidean dimensionality, gel networks of graphene that tenuously span space and common Fibonacci themes for non-equilibrium phenomena such as sunflowers and soot.

Argonne Physics Division Colloquium Schedule