Occam's razor redux: A simple mathematical approach to designing mechanical invisibility cloaks
Metamaterials – engineered materials with properties not found in nature – have led to an astounding range of optical, acoustic, thermodynamic, two-dimensional solid mechanics, and other types of invisibility cloaks that render the cloaked object indistinguishable from the environment around them – but the ability to cloak three-dimensional solid mechanics has proven elusive. (Solid mechanics is the branch of continuum mechanics – which models materials as a continuous mass rather than as discrete particles – that studies the behavior of solid materials, especially their motion and deformation under the action of forces, temperature changes, phase changes, and other external or internal agents.) Recently, however, scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany – following their design last year of a so-called unfeelability cloak1 that hides (at this point small) 3D objects such that they cannot be physically detected – have demonstrated a surprisingly simple and generalizable approach in which a coordinate...