Tendon the Achilles tendon stretches as the ankle joint dorsiflexes. During the last portion of the stride, as the foot plantar-flexes (pointing the toes down), the stored elastic energy is released. Furthermore, because the tendon stretches, the muscle is able to function with less or even no change in length, allowing the muscle to generate greater force. The mechanical properties of the tendon are dependent on the collagen fiber diameter and orientation. The collagen fibrils are parallel to each other and closely packed, but show a wave-like appearance due to planar undulations, or crimps, on a scale of several micrometers. In
Inelastic mean free path Inelastic mean free path The inelastic mean free path (IMFP) is an index of how far an electron on average travels through a solid before losing energy. If a monochromatic primary beam of electrons is incident on a solid surface, the majority of incident electrons lose their energy because they interact strongly with matter, leading to plasmon excitation, electron-hole pair formation, and vibrational excitation. The intensity of the primary electrons, formula_1, is damped as a function of the distance, "d", into the solid. The intensity decay can be expressed as follows: where formula_3 is the intensity after the primary electron