When liquids behave like solids

(Phys.org) —When a rubber ball and a droplet of water are compressed onto a solid surface, they behave very differently. For the ball, the compression process is reversible, so the ball retains its original form when decompressed. ...

Metal surface can repel electric charges

(Phys.org)—Metals are known for being good electrical conductors. Due to this property, a stationary electric point charge placed outside a metal will cause the electrons in the metal to redistribute in such a way that ...

Friction almost vanishes in microscale graphite

(Phys.org) -- In the phenomenon of superlubricity, two solid surfaces can slide past each other with almost no friction. The effect occurs when the solid surfaces have crystalline structures and their lattices are rotated ...

Best of Last Year: The top Phys.org articles of 2022

It was a good year for research of all kinds as three men shared the Nobel Prize in physics for their work that showed that tiny particles separated from one another at great distances can be entangled. Alain Aspect, John ...

Wobbling droplets in space confirm late professor's theory

At a time when astronomers around the world are reveling in new views of the distant cosmos, an experiment on the International Space Station has given Cornell researchers fresh insight into something a little closer to home: ...

Controlling how 'odd couple' surfaces and liquids interact

The wettability of a surface—whether drops of water or another liquid bead up or spread out when they come into contact with it—is a crucial factor in a wide variety of commercial and industrial applications, such as ...

Chemists develop a fundamentally new mode of adsorption

A research team, led by Northwestern Universitychemists, has made a breakthrough in surface science by introducing a new active mechanism of adsorption. Such adsorption-based phenomena, in which molecules are attracted onto ...

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