The concept of varifold

We survey-by means of 20 examples-the concept of varifold, as generalised submanifold, with emphasis on regularity of integral varifolds with mean curvature, while keeping prerequisites to a minimum. Integral varifolds are the natural language for studying the variational theory of the area isntegrand if one considers, for instance, existence or regularity of stationary (or stable) surfaces of dimension at least three or the limiting behaviour of sequences of smooth submanifolds under area and mean curvature bounds.