Experiments never deceive.
It is our judgment that sometimes deceives itself, because it expects results that experiment refuses. They model accurately the growth of the solid and the way in which heat diffuses away from the growth structure, visualizing the results in beautiful images and movies. In order to obtain their results, novel computational techniques are used, bringing together mathematical formalisms as disparate as partial differential equations, renormalization group theory, cellular automata, and adaptive mesh refinement. The simulations and theory are shedding light on experiments performed on the Space Shuttle by a group at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Research Groups Click on a topic to learn more about each group.