Guest speaker Dr. Howard Stone will lead a seminar on "Extending Classical Idea in Fluid Mechanics". Join us in person or on Zoom. The abstract is as follows: "Many modern research themes in science and engineering introduce new questions, some of which can be understood using classical ideas. I will provide examples of research discoveries from the subjects of thin film dynamics and cellular biology and in each case illuminate the phenomenon using fundamental ideas in fluid dynamics, with experiments and theory. In the first example, we will document experimentally the time and (three-dimensional) space variations of the shape of a falling film near the edge of a vertical plate and rationalize the quantitative features using a similarity solution. This example seems particularly unusual since we can theoretically show that the shape is described by a nonlinear partial differential equation, involving three independent variables, yet the equation can be reduced by a similarity transformation to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation; the results are in excellent agreement with experiments. As a second example, we discuss the formation of the spindle in a dividing cell, and report experiments documenting a condensed protein phase on growing microtubules, followed by the Rayleigh-Plateau instability, which produces discrete droplets along a microtubule, that then drives branching nucleation. If there is time at the end, I will briefly explain some very recent COVID-19-related work we have been doing about the fluid dynamics of airborne disease spread by asymptomatic individuals."