Fig. 1.

(A) The system consists of a network of 21$\times$21 square domains connected by thin ligaments. The positive direction of rotation alternates for neighboring squares: A counterclockwise rotation of the [i, j]th square (the square located on the ith row and jth column) is defined positive if $i+j$ is an even number and negative if $i+j$ is odd. (B) Deformation of the sample when subjected to ${\epsilon }_{\text{applied}}^{yy}=-4\%$. The color indicates the rotation of the squares. (C) We model the system as an array of rigid squares connected at their vertices by elastic springs. (D) Evolution of ${\theta }_{st}$ as a function of ${ϵ}_{\text{applied}}^{yy}$ as predicted by Eq. 5 (solid lines) and measured in our experiment (circles).