Videos

Abstract
Rigidity of frameworks, especially tensegrity frameworks appear in many natural and unexpected places. A tensegrity is just a configuration of points in some Euclidean space, together with upper distance constraints (cables) or lower distance constraints (struts) for some pairs of the vertices. I'll show physical tensegrities with chains for cables and steel tubes for struts, where you can "feel" the rigidity with your hands, and other tensegrities, where the rigidity is lurking in the background. I will also show connections of rigidity to circle and sphere packings, where configurations in a lower dimension are rigid, universally, in any higher dimension, where rigidity is related to polyhedra, and questions where certain kinds natural rigidity are not known, .. yet.