Playing with Active Matter featured in Scilight

The article Playing with active matter, published in the American Journal of Physics, has been featured on Scilight with a news with title “Using Hexbugs to model active matter”.

The news highlights that the approach used in the featured paper will make possible for students in the primary and secondary school system to demonstrate complex active motion principles in the classroom, at an affordable budget.
In fact, experiments at the microscale often require very expensive equipment. The commercially available toys called Hexbugs used in the publication provide a macroscopic analogue of active matter at the microscale and have the advantage of being affordable for experimentation in the classroom.

About Scilight:
Scilight showcase the most interesting research across the physical sciences published in AIP Publishing Journals.

Reference:
Hannah Daniel, Using Hexbugs to model active matter, Scilight 2024, 431101 (2024)
doi: 10.1063/10.0032401

Playing with Active Matter published in American Journal of Physics

One exemplar of the HEXBUGS used in the experiment. (Image by the Authors of the manuscript.)
Playing with Active Matter
Angelo Barona Balda, Aykut Argun, Agnese Callegari, Giovanni Volpe
Americal Journal of Physics 92, 847–858 (2024)
doi: 10.1119/5.0125111
arXiv: 2209.04168

In the past 20 years, active matter has been a very successful research field, bridging the fundamental physics of nonequilibrium thermodynamics with applications in robotics, biology, and medicine. Active particles, contrary to Brownian particles, can harness energy to generate complex motions and emerging behaviors. Most active-matter experiments are performed with microscopic particles and require advanced microfabrication and microscopy techniques. Here, we propose some macroscopic experiments with active matter employing commercially available toy robots (the Hexbugs). We show how they can be easily modified to perform regular and chiral active Brownian motion and demonstrate through experiments fundamental signatures of active systems such as how energy and momentum are harvested from an active bath, how obstacles can sort active particles by chirality, and how active fluctuations induce attraction between planar objects (a Casimir-like effect). These demonstrations enable hands-on experimentation with active matter and showcase widely used analysis methods.

Angelo Barona Balda defended his Master Thesis on 10 June 2022. Congrats!

Angelo Barona Balda defended his Master thesis in MPCAS at the Chalmers University of Technology on 10 June 2022 at 13:00. Congrats!

Title: Playful Experiments with Macroscopic Active Matter

Abstract:
Active matter is a substance or system composed of individual agents that consume energy. These agents use the energy to vibrate, self-propel, or apply force to their surroundings.

As it is such a strong theoretical resource, professors use active matter as a gateway to introduce students into non-equilibrium research. However, it is difficult to intuitively explain the behavior of microscopic particles. To better visualize it, academics frequently use simulations , both in classrooms and in research.

In this study, we use the HEXBUGS to replicate active matter simulations performed in previous research papers. We create experiments that are didactic, understandable, and easy to reproduce. Through this, we prove that HEXBUGS behave like active particles.

Name of the master programme: MPCAS – Complex Adaptive Systems
Examiner: Giovanni Volpe
Supervisor: Giovanni Volpe, Aykut Argun
Opponent: Noel Hall, Kasper Hall

Place: Origo 5.102
Time: 10 June, 2022, 13:00

Angelo Barona Balda joins the Soft Matter Lab

(Photo by A. Argun.)
Angelo Barona Balda joined the Soft Matter Lab on 10 January 2022.

Angelo is a master student in Complex Adaptive Systems at Chalmers University of Technology.

During his time at the Soft Matter Lab, he will investigate the behaviour of active matter via experiments with toy robots (HEXBUG nano®).