Physical Society Colloquium

Inexactly Poseable Problems in Statistical Mechanics

Greg van Anders

Department of Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy
Queen's University

Recent decades have shown remarkable insight into physical systems from exactly solvable models in statistical mechanics. In this talk, I will argue that statistical mechanics is relevant to many currently open problems, both within traditional physics and beyond, however, not only are these problems not likely to be exactly solvable, they are not even likely to be exactly poseable. I will show this with examples from design problems that range from soft condensed matter to naval architecture.