Debenedetti does entertaining science at Cornelia Street Cafe

The rumors are true: last week­end the School of Engineering’s vice dean Pablo Debenedetti was seen doing per­for­mance art in the West Vil­lage as part of the Cor­nelia Street Cafe’s “Enter­tain­ing Sci­ence” series. Debenedetti, a lead­ing expert in fluid ther­mo­dy­nam­ics, explored “famil­iar and strange water, in all its life-enhancing prop­er­ties — chem­i­cal, phys­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and musi­cal — with the musi­cians Katie Down and Matt Dar­riau.”

Down is known for clown­ing around in the ukulele band Uku­ladies. Dar­riau is known for his work with Para­dox Trio and the Klez­mat­ics, the only Klezmer band to have won a Grammy Award. As for Debenedetti? He is known for his work as a the­o­rist in con­densed mat­ter physics and engi­neer­ing. Ear­lier this year he pub­lished research sug­gest­ing a novel way to con­trol the behav­ior of water.

The Enter­tain­ing Sci­ence series is the brain­child of Roald Hoff­mann, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at Cor­nell who orches­trates delight­ful col­li­sions of art and sci­ence. That is Debenedetti (in the image above) hov­er­ing over the musi­cal duo; the back­ground image is taken from a com­pu­ta­tional inves­ti­ga­tion of the frac­ture mech­a­nisms of thin films of glassy water (non-crystalline solid water) upon cool­ing. Tech­ni­cal folks who want to know more can explore here.