15  TOUCHING SOAP 
      FILMS (EXCERPT)
 
AUTHORS MUSIC
Andreas Arnez, Konrad Polthier,
Martin Steffens, Christian Teitzel
Christoph März
PRODUCER
SOFTWARE
Konrad Polthier
Grape, Softimage
CONTRIBUTORS
HARDWARE
Bernd Oberknapp, Ralf Neubauer, Hermann Karcher, Erik Hansen, Leon Hansen, Matthias Heil, David Oliver, Armin Ortmann
Supported by: Sfb256 at University Bonn, Sfb288 at TU-Berlin
Silicon Graphics
FURTHER INFORMATION
www-sfb288.math.tu-berlin.de/
~konrad/video.html

German edition "Palast der Seifenhäute" available from Bild der Wissenschaft and Komplett-Video

SUMMARY
Touching Soap Films is a popular scientific video about the world of soap films. A soap film is physically similar to a rubber band, which tries to contract itself under surface tension to a surface with least area. Like few other problems the study of soap films has inspired many branches of mathematics since nearly 200 years, and it belongs to major research areas. This excerpt shows the continuous process of constructing a new minimal surface, discovered by Hermann Karcher in 1989, by inserting handles in the classical surface of Hermann Amandus Schwarz.
CONTACT
Konrad Polthier
Technische Universität Berlin
FB Mathematik, MA 8-3
Straäe des 17. Juni 136
10623 Berlin
Germany

Tel: +49.30.314.25782
Fax: +49.30.314.21577
konrad.polthier@fu-berlin.de

 
Copyright © 1998 VideoMath '98, Berlin