{"id":241880,"date":"2026-07-30T20:27:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T01:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/beyond-wrinkles-new-rule-explains-why-growing-shapes-suddenly-crumple"},"modified":"2026-07-30T20:27:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T01:27:35","slug":"beyond-wrinkles-new-rule-explains-why-growing-shapes-suddenly-crumple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/beyond-wrinkles-new-rule-explains-why-growing-shapes-suddenly-crumple","title":{"rendered":"Beyond wrinkles: New rule explains why growing shapes suddenly crumple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/beyond-wrinkles-new-rule-explains-why-growing-shapes-suddenly-crumple3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have discovered a previously unknown law of geometry that explains why some growing surfaces, whether in nature or in engineered materials, suddenly stop being able to stay smooth and instead form dimples and folds. Until now, researchers believed they understood the geometric rules behind these shape changes, but this study reveals a new kind of \u201cgeometric frustration\u201d that arises even when all the known rules are satisfied.<\/p>\n<p>The finding could reshape how scientists understand the formation of leaves, flowers, tissues and other natural structures while helping engineers design smarter materials that can deliberately change shape for applications in soft robotics, medicine and advanced manufacturing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have discovered a previously unknown law of geometry that explains why some growing surfaces, whether in nature or in engineered materials, suddenly stop being able to stay smooth and instead form dimples and folds. Until now, researchers believed they understood the geometric rules behind these shape changes, but this study reveals a new kind [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}