Graeme Milton Department of Mathematics, University of Utah Composite materials: An old field of study full of new surprises Tuesday 11th May 14:05-15:55pm, Carslaw Building Room 250. Composite materials have been studied for centuries, and have attracted the interest of reknown scientists such as Poisson, Faraday, Maxwell, Rayleigh, and Einstein. Their properties are usually not just a linear average of the properties of the constituent materials and can sometimes be strikingly different. The beautiful red glass one sees in old church windows is a suspension of small gold particles in glass. Sound waves travel slower in bubbly water than in either water or air. In the last few decades composites have been found to have some surprising properties. Most materials, such as rubber, get thinner when they are stretched, but it is possible to design composites which get fatter as they are stretched. Electromagnetic signals can travel faster in a composite than in the constituent phases. It is possible to combine materials which expand when heated to obtain a material which contracts when heated. Similarly it is possible to combine materials with positive Hall coefficients to get a composite with negative Hall coefficient. It is still an open question as to what properties can be achieved when one mixes two or more materials with known properties. This lecture will survey some of the progress which has been made.