Stephen W. Morris

Professor

Experimental Nonlinear Physics; 
Nonequilibrium pattern formation, 
convection in simple fluids and liquid crystals,
segregation in granular media,
fracture, geophysical patterns.

Office: (416) 978 - 6810

Lab:  (416) 978 - 0137
e-mail: 

Brief CV: B.Sc., British Columbia (1981) 
M.Sc., British Columbia (1985) 
Ph.D., Toronto (1991) 
NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, Santa Barbara (1991-1993) 
APUS/SAC Teaching Award, Toronto (2003) 
Faculty of Arts & Science Outstanding Teaching Award, Toronto (2004) 
Senior Visiting Fellow, The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematics, Cambridge University (2005). 
Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge University (2006).

Fellow of the American Physical Society (2012).

Research group homepage

Research Interests:

1. • Electroconvection in suspended smectic liquid crystal films.
   

2. • Fracture networks in directionally dried mud, and columnar joints.
   

3. • Convection at autocatalytic chemical reaction fronts.
   

4. • The rope coiling effect and the “fluid mechanical sewing machine”.
   

5. • Washboard road and granular segregation.
   

6. • Icicle morphology, ripples on icicles, spikes on ice cubes.
   

7. • Faraday waves on shaken fluids.
   

8. • Chladni patterns on vibrated plates.
   

9. • Pattern formation viewed aesthetically as Art, either from Nature or in the laboratory.
   

10. • Pattern formation in turbidity flows.
    

11. • Rayleigh-Bénard and Bénard-Marangoni convection.
    

12. • The Physics of everyday phenomena.

Recent publications

Recent seminars and colloquia

Teaching:

PHY101F: Emergence in Nature, Fall term 2011.

PHY101F: Emergence in Nature, Fall term 2008.