A study inspired by street performers making gigantic soap bubbles led to a discovery in fluid mechanics: Mixing different molecular sizes of polymers within a solution increases the ability of a thin film to stretch without breaking.
The journal Physical Review...
Owners of thoroughbred stallions carefully breed prizewinning horses over generations to eke out fractions of a second in million-dollar races. Materials scientists have taken a page from that playbook, turning to the power of evolution and artificial selection to...
Researchers have identified a new form of magnetism in so-called magnetic graphene, which could point the way toward understanding superconductivity in this unusual type of material.
The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, were able to control the conductivity...
In his quest to bring ever-faster cameras to the world, Caltech's Lihong Wang has developed technology that can reach blistering speeds of 70 trillion frames per second, fast enough to see light travel. Just like the camera in your...
Light particles normally do not "feel" each other because there is no interaction acting between them. Researchers at ETH have now succeeded in manipulating photons inside a semiconductor material in such a way as to make them repel each...
Even though they are inanimate objects, sand dunes can 'communicate' with each other. A team from the University of Cambridge has found that as they move, sand dunes interact with and repel their downstream neighbours.
Using an experimental dune 'racetrack',...
A quasi-particle that travels along the interface of a metal and dielectric material may be the solution to problems caused by shrinking electronic components, according to an international team of engineers.
"Microelectronic chips are ubiquitous today," said Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Evan...
Researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems (PCS), within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), and colleagues have reported a novel phenomenon, called Valley Acoustoelectric Effect, which takes place in 2-D materials, similar to...
Researchers have generated a wide range of colors from a single laser after discovering a new process for achieving so-called "supercontinuum generation."
Supercontinuum generation is when intense laser light of one color travels within a material, like glass, and broadens into a spectrum...
Visual comparison of printed surface before smoothing (1), with smoothing by conventional methods (2) and by 3D-CMF (3). CMF result (a-3) is more uniform than polishing (a-2), and CMF (b-3) accurately preserves more desired surface detail than solvent vapor...
Broadband fiber-optics carry information on pulses of light, at the speed of light, through optical fibers. But the way the light is encoded at one end and processed at the other affects data speeds.
This world-first nanophotonic device, just unveiled...
