Playing with building blocks for metamaterial design

Legos construction reveals clues to how vibrations travel through specialized structures

Paolo Celli playing with LEGOs

GROWN-UP TOYS Legos, a childhood toy for Paolo Celli of the University of Minnesota, are now a tool that he and colleagues use to explore the properties of metamaterials.

Tom Siegfried

BALTIMORE — Metamaterials, among the most intricate and skillfully designed configurations of matter ever devised by science, could be improved with the help of Legos.