http://phys.org/physics-news/soft-matter/ en-us Phys.Org provides the latest news on soft matter, soft condensed matter, liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials A fried breakfast food popular in Spain provided the inspiration for the development of doughnut-shaped droplets that may provide scientists with a new approach for studying fundamental issues in physics, mathematics and materials. http://phys.org/news288354259.html Physics - Soft Matter Tue, 21 May 2013 11:24:27 EST news288354259 Researchers at the University of Twente's MESA+ research institute have given the first demonstration of how the drag exerted on liquids flowing through tiny "fluidic chips" is affected by the introduction of diminutive gas bubbles. Armed with this knowledge, scientists can directly manipulate flow resistance in a variety of applications involving combinations of liquids and gas bubbles. This could be useful in areas ranging from the manufacture of fizzy drinks to the development of artificial lungs. http://phys.org/news287741273.html Physics - Soft Matter Tue, 14 May 2013 09:08:26 EST news287741273 Researchers at DOE's Brookhaven are using the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) to categorize the many facets of fat crystals. They've learned that the distribution and directionality of these crystal nanostructures affects the flavor and texture of foods. http://phys.org/news286185844.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:50:01 EST news286185844 What happens if you slowly evaporate a droplet containing dissolved particles? The question sounds simple, but it involves a surprising amount of basic physics and mathematics. Hanneke Gelderblom of the University of Twente devoted a full four years of research to this problem, looking into a variety of aspects including the physics behind coffee stains. "I found this study to be particularly interesting because of the combination of theory and experimentation." Gelderblom will defend her doctoral dissertation on 19 April. http://phys.org/news285492056.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:21:05 EST news285492056 (Phys.org) —A combined team of researchers from the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany and Kobe University in Japan has determined that the Brazil nut effect is less pronounced as gravity is reduced. The team describes tests they undertook both in the lab and as part of a simulated reduced gravity environment aboard an airplane in their paper they've uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, and the results they found after analyzing their observations. http://phys.org/news284720534.html Physics - Soft Matter Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:02:43 EST news284720534 Sunghwan Jung is a fan of the 19th Century born John William Strutt, 3rd, also known as Lord Baron Rayleigh. An English physicist, Rayleigh, along with William Ramsay, discovered the gas argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904. http://phys.org/news283175262.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:48:34 EST news283175262 One of the most noteworthy concerns for the U.S. Department of Energy is controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide to mitigate its effects on global climate and, in turn, energy consumption. Geological formations, such as the Mt. Simon Sandstone Reservoir in the Illinois basin, offer potential storage for captured CO2—the challenge is knowing that, once packed in saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas fields, the CO2 will stay there. Using EMSL's Microfabrication and Subsurface Flow and Transport capabilities, as well as fluorescence microscopy and image analysis, scientists crafted a micromodel in a silicon wafer to mimic Mt. Simon sandstone's low-permeability pore structure. http://phys.org/news283072368.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:13:05 EST news283072368 Blood, paint or ketchup are complex liquids composed of several different components. For the construction of pumps, or the improvement of technical processes scientists and engineers need description models. They make the special properties of such liquids predictable. Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich have developed such a model. They present it in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. http://phys.org/news281882369.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:39:38 EST news281882369 Theoretical physicist Moumita Maiti and colleagues at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India, have now implemented an algorithm for analysing void space in sphere packing, where the spheres need not all be the same size. This method, about to be published in European Physical Journal E, could be applied to analyse the geometry of liquids present between multi-sized spheres that are akin to a model for porous material. This provides a tool for studying the flow of such fluids through porous material. More importantly, it can also be used to study the packing geometry of proteins. http://phys.org/news278921093.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 01 Feb 2013 06:05:01 EST news278921093 Barbara Capone of the Computational Physics Group of the University of Vienna has developed a new method for the construction of building blocks at the nanoscale. The researcher in Soft Matter Physics, who works at the group of Christos Likos, Professor for Multiscale Computational Physics, is specialized on topics of self-assembly of materials at the nanoscale and she has published, together with her colleagues, a paper at the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. http://phys.org/news277641987.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:46:46 EST news277641987 A new study published in the American Institute of Physics' (AIP) journal Physics of Fluids reveals that the normal rebounding of a ball changes when it is partially filled with a liquid. Unlike an empty sphere or a solid rubber ball, which both rebound in a classical and well-understood fashion, a fluid-filled ball has its second bounce remarkably cut short. http://phys.org/news276440758.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:06:15 EST news276440758 Small floating objects change the dynamics of the surface they are on. This is an effect every serious student of breakfast has seen as rafts of floating cereal o's arrange and rearrange themselves into patterns on the milk. Now scientists have suggested that this process may offer insight into nanoscale engineering processes. http://phys.org/news272293557.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:06:12 EST news272293557 Ethanol, a component of biofuel made from plants such as corn, is blended with gas in many parts of the country, but has significantly different fluid properties than pure gasoline. A group of researchers from the University of Michigan wondered how ethanol-based fuels would spread in the event of a large aquatic spill. They found that ethanol-based liquids mix actively with water, very different from how pure gasoline interacts with water and potentially more dangerous to aquatic life. http://phys.org/news272293486.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:04:55 EST news272293486 (Phys.org)—Lian-Ping Wang, professor of mechanical engineering and joint professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, recently published an invited critical review paper in the 2013 volume of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, a high impact journal for the fluid mechanics community. http://phys.org/news269160628.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 11 Oct 2012 07:50:38 EST news269160628 (Phys.org)—A way of printing lasers using everyday inkjet technology has been created by scientists. The development has a wide range of possible applications, ranging from biomedical testing to laser arrays for displays. http://phys.org/news267254609.html Physics - Soft Matter Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:23:38 EST news267254609 (Phys.org)—Scientists at the University of Twente's MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology have developed a new material that is not only extremely water-repellent but also extremely oil-repellent. It contains minuscule pillars which retain droplets. What makes the material unique is that the droplets stay on top even when they evaporate (slowly getting smaller). This opens the way to such things as smartphone screens that really cannot get dirty. The study appears today in the scientific journal Soft Matter. http://phys.org/news267088695.html Physics - Soft Matter Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:30:01 EST news267088695 Many plants and animals have textured surfaces on their body for manipulating water. Some textured surfaces are designed, for example, to improve adhesion, while others may enable the collection of water from fog in arid regions. The lotus leaf, in particular, is the most widely cited example of having a textured surface with self-cleaning properties (see image). http://phys.org/news264241656.html Physics - Soft Matter Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:30:01 EST news264241656 (Phys.org) -- When you’re just a few microns long, swimming can be difficult. At that size scale, the viscosity of water is more like that of honey, and momentum can’t be relied upon to maintain forward motion. http://phys.org/news263490502.html Physics - Soft Matter Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:48:38 EST news263490502 All children who build sandcastles on the beach know that in addition to sand you also need to add a little water to prevent the structure from collapsing. But why is this? In an article which appeared today in Scientific Reports from the publishers of Nature, researchers from the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Institute of Physics (IoP) answer this question. http://phys.org/news263131061.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:57:59 EST news263131061 So-called glass-formers are a class of highly viscous liquid materials that have the consistency of honey and turn into brittle glass once cooled to sufficiently low temperatures. Zhen Chen and his colleagues from Arizona State University, USA, have elucidated the behaviour of these materials as they are on the verge of turning into glass in an article about to be published in European Physical Journal E.. http://phys.org/news263038575.html Physics - Soft Matter Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:16:29 EST news263038575 (Phys.org) -- Snow avalanches, a real threat in countries from Switzerland to Afghanistan, are fundamentally a physics problem: What are the physical laws that govern how they start, grow and move, and can theoretical modeling help predict them? http://phys.org/news262412351.html Physics - Soft Matter Wed, 25 Jul 2012 05:19:17 EST news262412351 (Phys.org) -- From driftwood traveling down a river to a blood cell flowing through your artery, objects moving in a stream of fluid are mostly thought to passively go with the flow but not disturb it in controllable ways.  http://phys.org/news261804483.html Physics - Soft Matter Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:28:14 EST news261804483 (Phys.org) -- Earlier this year, a team of scientists, led by Professor Julian Eastoe in the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry, announced they had created a liquid surfactant (soap) that could be moved by a magnet. http://phys.org/news259565543.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 22 Jun 2012 06:32:45 EST news259565543 By taking advantage of the unique patterns generated when two immiscible fluids flow together, scientists have developed a new tool for studying tiny biomolecules. http://phys.org/news258131431.html Physics - Soft Matter Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:10:41 EST news258131431 Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology achieved a 17-percent increase in boiling efficiency by using an acoustic field to enhance heat transfer. The acoustic field does this by efficiently removing vapor bubbles from the heated surface and suppressing the formation of an insulating vapor film. http://phys.org/news257100162.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 24 May 2012 17:43:46 EST news257100162 (Phys.org) -- A team of physicists has used the high-energy x-rays of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory to penetrate the everyday mystery of a splash, revealing previously hidden structures and dynamics. http://phys.org/news255772602.html Physics - Soft Matter Wed, 09 May 2012 08:56:59 EST news255772602 A new study by a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) indicates that thin polymer films can have different properties depending on the method by which they are made. The results suggest that deeper work is necessary to explore the best way of creating these films, which are used in applications ranging from high-tech mirrors to computer memory devices. http://phys.org/news255252882.html Physics - Soft Matter Thu, 03 May 2012 09:20:01 EST news255252882 Stir lots of small particles into water, and the resulting thick mixture appears highly viscous. When this dense suspension slips through a nozzle and forms a droplet, however, its behavior momentarily reveals a decidedly non-viscous side. University of Chicago physicists recorded this surprising behavior in laboratory experiments using high-speed photography that can capture action taking place in one hundred-thousandths of a second or less. http://phys.org/news252353064.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:04:47 EST news252353064 Ironing increases the humidity of a piece of cloth by injecting water vapor in the form of steam. But how does the vapor affect the fabric? Until now, it was thought that its only effect was to soften the fibers. French researchers at the Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée et Nanostructures de Lyon have now shown that water vapor plays another key role by acting on the contacts between the fibers, whether or not the material they are made of absorbs humidity. This work has just been published online in the journal Soft Matter. http://phys.org/news249300296.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:05:10 EST news249300296 An article published in Physical Review E and conducted by Spanish researchers at the universities of Granada and Barcelona might lead to a revolutionary change in water desalination and filtration methods. http://phys.org/news249299592.html Physics - Soft Matter Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:53:23 EST news249299592