Figure 6.
Buckling of stiff rods under compression, with and without a supporting elastic gel. A compressive force fc is applied to a rod of unbent length L and bending modulus κ. For a free rod (upper image), large-scale bending is free to occur (bending exaggerated for clarity). In the presence of a surrounding gel (lower image), large displacements are suppressed and short-wavelength buckling occurs instead and the compressive force depends on the characteristic length scale of the buckling, given by λ. (Reprinted from Brangwynne et al. 2006.)