S.E. Lindberg's Blog, page 65

Robert Hooke: a Microrheology Pioneer

I just attended the 83rd Annual Society of Rheology (SoR) in Cleveland, Ohio, and wanted to share some important links between Art/Science and Micro-rheology/Robert Hooke.


Rheology is "the study of the deformation or flow of matter" so SoR attracts a diverse bunch: device manufacturers designing diagnostic, medicinal widgets (blood flow); product and process engineers of paints, cosmetics, and foodstuffs; packaging designers concerned with manipulating molten plastic; petroleum engineers ruminating on extracting oil from the earth; and even biophysicists studying the mechanical properties of cytoplasm.   


The "Father of Microscopy" dreamed up the "Spring Constant"

Nerds are often self-deprecating and insecure, so it is refreshing that SoR's diverse participation welcomes people with multidisciplinary backgrounds (like me!).  Although I am a chemist by education, I have more experience performing microscopy and am embedded within a group of product/chemical engineers at work.   Since 2005, I could best be described as a "micro-rheologist" who studies the variation of mechanical properties within soft matter mixtures (more on microrheology below).


When your experience morphs you into being a master of the interdisciplinary, it is refreshing to find a single champion representing your apparently disparate fields of study (and hobbies).  Hence I was delighted to realize that the "father-of-microscopy" Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was the same who dreamed up "Hooke's Law" of elasticity (Hooke's law describes the elasticity of springs which is fundamental to rheology ... "As is the extension, so is the force"); but wait there is more... he was an artist too!  



Scientists were once artists
Of course, cameras did not exist in 1665, so early scientists had to draw their data! Leonardo Davinci's notebook is a classic documentation of this, but consider early anatomists who had to draw fast since their non-refrigerated corpses/subjects decomposed (for more on this, I recommend Kemp's beautiful book: Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body).


Hooke pioneered the use of the microscope and presented his survey of microstructures to the Royal Society in his "Micrographia, or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses (click to browse the interactive book). Hooke had to draw his observations as he peered into strange, microscopic worlds.

 
Click to go to the interactive Flash book of Hooke's notebook

Particle Tracking Microrheology - 
Hooke was a Microrheology PioneerMicroscopes can be used as rheometers too!  To do this, one needs to be able to document the speed and location of colloidal bits (~1/100 the diameter of human hair) as they jiggle by Brownian motion (thermal fluctuations).  Difficult to do this by hand!

Note that Einstein was key in enabling the use of a microscope to measure one of Chemists' most famous number, the Avogadro constant, being the number of atoms per mole of material; well Einstein set the stage anyway, J.B. Perrin checked this experimentally with a microscope ~1900.

0.53micron particle tracking data from J.B. Perrin ~1913
A field of Particle Tracking Micro-rheology (PTM) has been emerging since the mid-1990's, fueled by the advent of the digital camera.  PTM Practioners will appreciate the often ignored Davidison and Collins' 1976 study of heterogeneous domains within Carbopol slurries in which they relied on Polaroid film and overlays of negatives to capture their data (J. A. Davidson and E. A. Collins, Journalof Colloid and Interface Science, 1976, 55, 163-169).

In complex fluids (from living cells to cosmetics) we are presented with a mixture of spring-like structures that are much smaller than the eye can detect.  Bulk methods can describe how they look to the eye (a camera) or how they flow as a composite (rheology), but to see measure the landscape of properties we need a microscope to see (a) the structure of the material that has a variety spring-like properties and (b) the rate at which free particles push against them.

PTM tutorials:For an online tutorial of the nitty-gritty workflow I recommend MIT's website (some example images from there are highlighted below to illustrate how the motion of particles can be tracked); and for an example of how PTM can be used to measure soft matter mixtures I recommend Caggioni's paper "Rheology and microrheology of a microstructured fluid: The gellan gum case (link).

Halloween Crafts: Spooky Apple Head Creatures

Crafting Prototype Creatures [image error] www.appledolls.orgI am designing creatures for the sequel to Lords of Dyscrasia and am exploring possibilities with tangible prototypes.  This process yielded an easily reapplied Halloween craft!

Animating Manikins: The dark hero Lysis reanimated the skeletons and armatures of Doctor Grave's Dissection Theater to form his undead troop, the Red Horde (image below).  Motivated to integrate the mysterious fruit/orchard themes littering the book (the presence of which will be explained in the sequel) with this Horde led me to literally mix (1) apple-head crafts with (2) art manikins.  The results are...

Simple Spooky Apple Head CreaturesAppledolls.org is a nice resource for creating traditional dolls (as seen on Martha Sterwart :)).  Below is my modified method:  Skin an apple; for a spooky effect, leave some slivers of skin on the face to mimic scarsCarve into a shape such that, when dried, will resemble a headEnsure it can be mounted to a doll or art manikin; for the art manikin route, carve a hole in the under side of the apple so that it can become a "helmet"--for a tight fit, allow the apple to dry on the manikin head.Decorate with paint, needles, toothpicks, etc. ; Simple PVA glue makes for good drool!
The Red Horde: reanimated armatures, skeletons, and art manikins from Lords of Dyscrasia The Next-Generation Red Horde?

Lords of Dyscrasia Promotions - Free Books!

In hopes of generating customer reviews (ratings, etc.), Iam luring victims readers with promotions:
1) Through Halloween 2011 (10/31/2011), I am giving away free paperbacks of Lords of Dyscrasia via Goodreads.com (open to U.S. and Canada due to shipping constraints). Goodreads assigns winners randomly from a list of anyone who requests to be included. 
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Goodreads Book Giveaway Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg Giveaway ends October 31, 2011.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win
2) LibraryThing.com (click link) will be hosting a Giveaway of 50 ePubs. This is the easiest way to share the novel globally (Giveaway starting Oct. 1st 2011).  LibraryThing offers a few types of Giveaway programs, this Member version selects winners randomly from any who request it.

3) Read the ePub and get a free paperback!I am offering complimentary signed paperbacks to those who post on-lineratings, reviews, or testimonials. The first chapter is free, and full versiononly $2.99. Click here to find out how to sample the ePubs! ForeWord gave it 5/5 stars. Do you agree? Read the review!Foreword Clarion Review gave Lords of Dyscrasia 5 stars!

"...Outside of the works of Poe and Lovecraft, thereare few, if any, novels comparable to this one...
Beowulf comes to mind both for its epic quality and bloodyaction...

The pace is nearly breathless...Lindberg, who also created more than 50 illustrations andthe cover for this book, makes the majority of current popular fantasy fictionread like recipes by comparison.  Lordsof Dyscrasia is highly recommended, though not for the faint of heart."

Five Star ForeWord Review of Lords of Dyscrasia

Created a new Reviews Tab that includes this; added here as a Post to broadcast the news!







ForeWord Clarion ReviewFICTION: FANTASY Lords of Dyscrasia Review
S. E. LindbergIgnis Publishing LLC978-0-615-39286-8Five Stars (out of Five)September 2011
"...highly recommended, though not for the faint of heart..."
"Diary, I tallied the Dissection Theater's subjects again."
So begins the debut novel of Massachusetts native and chemist-by-day Seth Lindberg. This decidedly dark fantasy is heavily influenced by Dante, Poe, Lovecraft, and a great love for weird tales.
Opening the novel is the narrator, Dey, a seer and the stepson of Endenken Lysis. Endenken's father, the leader of Clan Lysis, has recently died. In fact, much of Dey's and Endenken's world is dying. Humans and gods (both insectoid and avian) are infected with dyscrasia, a blood disease that is fatal to all who contract it. Endenken's ancestors, the Picti, endeavored to save their gods through a complicated ritual that allows the Lysis clan to bear descendants who may eventually find a cure for dyscrasia. However, nothing is that simple. In the process of conducting the rite to pass his clan's powers onto him, Endenken rejects his inheritance in favor of saving his wife and finding a way to end the blood plague.Outside of the works of Poe and Lovecraft, there are few, if any, novels comparable to this one. It has a bardic tone, as if it was a tale told over many nights. Beowulf comes to mind both for its epic quality and bloody action.

"The pace is nearly breathless..."

Imagery shifts from mundane to surreal in the same paragraph. The pace is nearly breathless, though it never feels forced. Lindberg's love of the English language and his admiration for Dante in particular are obvious on every page. The melancholic dread that Poe and Lovecraft were so skilled at creating is matched—and at times exceeded—in Lindberg's prose: "I stared upward at a skull and heap of bones. I knew only the soul of a man spoke to me, and that astral, red warmth emanated from the charnel pile. A woman's skeleton lay near—her hands gauntleted with insectan claws belonging to some eldritch creature and her head helmeted with a gargantuan bird skull, much like my own."
Apart from a rather obsessive attachment to the words eldritch and ichor, Lords of Dyscrasia is carefully crafted and fits well into the weird-fiction canon. Given that Poe and Lovecraft have been dead for decades and still remain popular, Lindberg's novel should find a ready-made audience in readers of the macabre and strange.
Lindberg, who also created more than fifty illustrations and the cover for this book, makes the majority of current popular fantasy fiction read like recipes by comparison. Lords of Dyscrasia is highly recommended, though not for the faint of heart.
- Janine Stinson

"...makes the majority of current popular fantasy fiction read like recipes..."