*Participation to this club is as easy as i) sending a reference/abstract of your paper if you are working in this area or ii) send a challenge concept/issue/expt if you are not experimentalist :)*  

The September 2011 journal club theme is “In-situ Studies in Mechanics”. The basic concept is to perform the experiments under a microscope, so that the typical quantitative information (stress, strain, crack length to name a few obvious ones) is augmented with real time microscopy output. The advantages are many-fold; (i) one can ‘see’ the deformation and failure process to reduce intelligent guesses in modeling (ii) experimental/boundary condition accuracy is enhanced, particularly for nanoscale specimens, (iii) access to various domains typically not considered by the mechanics community. The power of visualization actually goes beyond these three salient features, a vicarious example of which is the Journal of Visualized Experiments (http://www.jove.com/). It is not really a mechanics journal, but the concept of expressing your thoughts and experiences with pictures and video boosts efficiency and liveliness in dissemination and learning instantly.