Some mathematical challenges in materials science

Abstract

Four challenges to mathematics research posed by the field of materials science are given, plus an additional challenge purely from the field of geometric measure theory. The problems all concern the effects of surface and grain boundary free energy: motion by weighted mean curvature and/or surface diffusion and/or other kinetics, proofs of minimality of soap bubble clusters and their anisotropic analogs, shapes of crystals in a gravitational or other field, incorporating data from simulations into mathematics, and understanding flat chains modulo ν \nu . The figures are selected copies of transparencies presented at the lecture on which this paper is based.