News tagged with phase transitions
Reversible doping: Hydrogen flips switch on vanadium oxide
If you are not a condensed matter physicist, vanadium oxide (VO2) may be the coolest material you've never heard of. It's a metal. It's an insulator. It's a window coating and an optical switch. And thanks ...
May 21, 2012 |
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Graphite enters different states of matter
(Phys.org) -- For the first time, scientists have seen an X-ray-irradiated mineral go to two different states of matter in about 40 femtoseconds (a femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second).
May 16, 2012 |
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Swift satellite monitors departing Comet Garradd
(Phys.org) -- An outbound comet that provided a nice show for skywatchers late last year is the target of an ongoing investigation by NASA's Swift satellite. Formally designated C/2009 P1 (Garradd), the unusually ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 13, 2012 |
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Ultrafast sonograms shed new light on rapid phase transitions
An international team of physicists has developed a method for taking ultrafast 'sonograms' that can track the structural changes that take place within solid materials in trillionth-of-a-second intervals ...
Mar 08, 2012 |
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Watching a gas turn superfluid
Every time you boil water in a kettle, you witness a phenomenon known as a phase transition — water transforms from a liquid to a gas, as you can see from the bubbling water and hissing steam. MIT physicists ...
Jan 18, 2012 |
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Scientists study protein dynamical transitions
(PhysOrg.com) -- Central to life and all cellular functions, proteins are complex structures that are anything but static, though often illustrated as two-dimensional snapshots in time.
Dec 15, 2011 |
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Weird world of water gets a little weirder with a new anomaly
Strange, stranger, strangest! To the weird nature of one of the simplest chemical compounds -- the stuff so familiar that even non-scientists know its chemical formula -- add another odd twist. Scientists ...
Nov 09, 2011 |
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Batteries get a quick charge with new anode technology
(PhysOrg.com) -- A breakthrough in components for next-generation batteries could come from special materials that transform their structure to perform better over time.
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Nov 03, 2011 |
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Through the looking glass: physicists solve age-old problem
(PhysOrg.com) -- A problem plaguing physicists across the globe for centuries has finally made a leap towards resolution. The nature of glass has stumped scientists for years but now a researcher from Queen ...
Oct 17, 2011 |
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A microscopic view on quantum fluctuations
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics achieve direct imaging of quantum fluctuations at absolute zero temperature.
Oct 14, 2011 |
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Advanced electron microscope sheds light on metal embrittlement
Why does a solid metal that is engineered for ductility become brittle, often suddenly and with dramatic consequences, in the presence of certain liquid metal impurities?
Sep 22, 2011 |
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How diamonds emerge from graphite
Scientists have used a new method to precisely simulate the phase transition from graphite to diamond for the first time. Instead of happening concerted, all at once, the conversion evidently takes place in ...
Sep 21, 2011 |
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Los Alamos achieves world-record pulsed magnetic field, moves closer to 100-tesla mark
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory have set a new world record for the strongest magnetic field produced by ...
Aug 23, 2011 |
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Better batteries through nanoscale 3D chemical imaging
Concerns over the finite availability of oil and the effect of greenhouse gases on climate have spurred intense efforts to develop electric-drive vehicles; the major barrier to successful commercialization ...
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Aug 09, 2011 |
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Astronomy without a telescope - bubblology
One model of a hypothetical multiverse has, perhaps appropriately, some similarity to a glass of beer. Imagine an eternal false vacuum – that’s a bit like a fluid, though not all that much like a f ...
Jul 25, 2011 |
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Phase transition
A phase transition is a natural physical process. It has the characteristic of taking a given medium with given properties and transforming some or all of that medium, into a new medium with new properties. Phase transitions occur frequently and are found everywhere in the natural world. Some engineering techniques exploit certain types of phase transition.
In thermodynamics, a phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase to another.
At a phase transition point, physical properties may undergo abrupt change: for instance, the volume of the two phases may be vastly different as is illustrated by the boiling of liquid water to form steam.
The term is most commonly used to describe transitions between solid, liquid and gaseous states of matter, in rare cases including plasma.
For more information about Phase transition, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
