Take a piece of uncooked spaghetti and bend it.  Notice it breaks into 3 (sometimes 4) pieces.  Why is that?  How far can the tower of Pisa lean before it collapses?  Why are materials so much weaker than theory suggests? These are examples of elastic fracture problems of interest to geologists, engineers and planetary people.

In this talk I will describe how we got involved with trying to solve fracture problems, how we model the growth of cracks and how successful we have been.  Videos will illustrate the simulations.
 
 

Convenors:Kais Hamza, John Lattanzio, Marty Ross