Research news on Interactions & forces

Interactions & forces, as a research area, focuses on the quantitative description and theoretical understanding of how physical entities influence one another via fundamental interactions and emergent effective forces. It encompasses studies of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions, along with interatomic, intermolecular, and many-body forces in condensed matter, soft matter, and plasma systems. Research typically integrates field theories, potential models, and numerical simulations to characterize force laws, energy landscapes, and response functions across scales, from subatomic particles to macroscopic structures, enabling predictive models of structure, dynamics, and phase behavior in diverse physical and engineered systems.

The structure of water: Entropy determines whether ions stick

Water molecules do not simply swirl around in complete disorder; they can form certain preferred structures. This scientific fact is often presented in entirely unscientific ways. For example, when people speak of an alleged ...

Physicists achieve first-ever 'quadsqueezing' quantum interaction

Researchers at the University of Oxford have demonstrated a new type of quantum interaction using a single trapped ion. By creating and controlling increasingly complex forms of "squeezing" – including a fourth-order effect ...

Handle with care: Mobile microgrippers pick up cells in a pinch

In tissue engineering, the tiniest bit of improper force can harm a living culture. Spheroids—3D clumps of cells—can be used to model complex human tissues, because they can re-create specific cell-to-cell and cell-to-matrix ...

A hidden property of light could power future nanomachines

Light does more than illuminate the world—it can also push and twist matter. It was back in the 1870s that James Clerk Maxwell first predicted that light carries momentum and can exert pressure on objects. Nearly a century ...

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