https://phys.org/physics-news/soft-matter/ en-us The latest news on soft matter, soft condensed matter, liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials Animals and electronic devices aren't the only things with memory. Materials can retain memories of past deformations in their microscopic structure. A common example is a crease in a sheet of paper that has been folded then unfolded. Understanding this type of memory could benefit the design of materials that respond to changes in their environment in predictable ways. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-chocolate-syrup-fluid-multiple-interacting.html Condensed Matter Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:50:02 EDT news704043002 Reliably generating controlled miniature rotations has long been a challenge: Chemical propulsion systems wear out, and methods that use electric or magnetic fields require complex setups. A team from KIT's Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT) and the Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics (SINANO) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has now demonstrated that flow at a water surface alone is sufficient to rotate a floating object in a fixed direction. Their research is published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-surface-vortices-tiny-rotors-electricity.html General Physics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:00:01 EDT news703947421 Logically, you would think a sleek surface has optimal aerodynamics—but recent research at Tohoku University turns this fundamental principle on its head. Applying an irregular microscale surface texture reduced the aerodynamic drag of a test model. The innovation has potential applications in the design of fuel-efficient vehicles. The study is published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-microscale-roughness-breakthrough-defies-years.html General Physics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:00:04 EDT news703935124 A new paper in the journal Nature Physics offers insights into the physics of liquid droplets—and while many people may not appreciate the mathematical accomplishment, they will benefit from the athletic wear and raincoats it makes possible. The recent article, "Tricky Tension," explores the intersection of physics and textiles and how wetting is influenced by the structure of tiny individual liquid droplets. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-physics-mathematical.html General Physics Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:30:01 EDT news703497428 Each summer, lawns are marked by a familiar addition: "silly sprinklers," whose loops and spirals spew water in creative ways. While seemingly frivolous in their construction, a team of mathematicians has used their design to address a long-standing mystery surrounding the laws of physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-silly-sprinklers-reverse-unravel-decades.html Soft Matter Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:00:03 EDT news702907799 Cornstarch can thicken soup or serve as a base for a DIY shampoo, but there's more to the humble pantry staple. Given the right conditions, it seems to defy the laws of physics. Mixing cornstarch with water creates "oobleck"—a shape-shifting substance classified as a non-Newtonian fluid that changes states when subjected to a force. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-oobleck-droplets-reveal-ways-cornstarch.html Soft Matter Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:00:07 EDT news703149113 Viscosity is one of the most fundamental physical properties used to describe how materials flow. It governs the movement of liquids, molten rocks and even slowly deforming regions deep inside the Earth. While scientists have long studied materials with low or moderate viscosities, a simple but important question has remained largely unexplored: Is there a physically meaningful upper limit to viscosity? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-earth-deepest-upper-limit-viscosity.html General Physics Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:20:07 EDT news702543714 A study published in Nature Physics provides new molecular-level evidence from simulations that liquid water is not a single uniform substance, but a constantly shifting mixture of two distinct microscopic structures. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-molecular-evidence-liquid.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:20:03 EDT news701609342 A research team from Hiroshima University, the University of Colorado, and other collaborators have demonstrated that space-time crystals—exotic structures that, under external drive, loop endlessly through both space and time—can be created using everyday liquid-crystal materials. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-classical-space-crystals-majorana.html Soft Matter Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:07:24 EDT news701514422 When a physics student asked baristas at the Warsaw Coffee Conference what their biggest question for scientists was, the baristas said they wanted to know how to stop channeling during brewing. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-espresso-pucks-pressures.html General Physics Tue, 23 Jun 2026 11:00:08 EDT news701347039 Researchers at the University of Twente and Utrecht University have packed rigid, rod-shaped particles into soft lipid containers the size of a living cell and watched the container and its contents reshape each other. The vesicle's form determines how the rods line up; the tightly packed rods, in turn, bend the container into new shapes. This provides a minimal model for how physical coupling between a soft boundary and internal filaments can help cellular structures organize from within. The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-minimal-cell.html Soft Matter Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:00:08 EDT news701357761 Superfluids are intriguing states of matter in which particles behave like a giant collective wave, allowing them to flow without any friction. When this fluid flows past a fixed obstacle at a velocity below a specific threshold, it moves around it without slowing down or exerting any drag. Above this critical velocity, however, the superfluid state starts to break down, and the energy from the flow dissipates in the form of ripples and vortices in the fluid. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-tiny-superfluid.html Soft Matter Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:20:01 EDT news701088049 Ultrasound-based irradiation of rock formations has attracted considerable attention as a technique for enhancing heavy-oil (high-viscosity crude oil) recovery from deep underground reservoirs. However, a unified theoretical framework for wave propagation and energy dissipation in these formations remains lacking because water coexists with heavy oil within rock pores, and gas bubbles in the water respond dynamically to ultrasonic excitation, thereby creating a complex system. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ultrasound-propagation-porous-theory-distinct.html Soft Matter Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:40:05 EDT news701010438 Flocking birds and schools of fish are a familiar sight. While previous research has uncovered the broad dynamics driving these movements, their underlying intricacies remain a mystery. Now a study by a team of New York University mathematicians offers new insights into these phenomena. It reveals that flocks and schools behave in ways similar to a soft crystalline material, with individual birds and fish serving as "atoms" that are evenly spaced in a lattice-like formation. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-flocking-birds-schools-fish-crystal.html Soft Matter Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:00:07 EDT news700932527 Amorphous materials such as glass are solids whose internal structure lacks a repeating pattern. Their molecules are arranged in a random and irregular way. Surprisingly, these disordered materials can "remember" past mechanical experiences; that is, the way they respond to a force can depend on how they have responded to external forces before. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-random-deformation-glassy-materials-precise.html Condensed Matter Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:50:01 EDT news700846142 Certain substances can become magnetic when exposed to an external magnetic field. Magnetic susceptibility measures how easily a material can be magnetized. Materials known as organic radicals have been noted to possess anomalously large magnetic susceptibility. However, researchers have been unable to explain this phenomenon using conventional theories. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-intermolecular-collisions-radical-fluids-unusually.html Condensed Matter Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:20:06 EDT news700830361 Pack enough string-like objects together, and they will begin to align with one another. But replace the strings with worms or bacteria living in your gut, and this self-organization becomes much more difficult. A team of University of Amsterdam (UvA) researchers has demonstrated that activity can fundamentally alter one of the most important phase transitions in soft matter physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-motion.html Soft Matter Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:00:02 EDT news700326148 Researchers have developed a method for making simultaneous soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) measurements of solid-liquid interfaces and bulk liquids. By controlling the thickness of the liquid layer, they obtained the O K-edge XAS spectrum of bulk H2O from a liquid H2O layer on a thin Au film using the transmission method, and they used the electron-yield method to obtain the XAS spectrum of the H2O/Au interface by measuring the drain currents from the Au surface following soft X-ray absorption. This method for obtaining simultaneous XAS measurements of solid-liquid interfaces and bulk liquids can be utilized to investigate the mechanisms of a variety of catalytic, electrochemical, and biological reactions involving solid-liquid interfaces. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ray-method-captures-solid-liquid.html General Physics Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:40:01 EDT news699808321 When a person coughs or sneezes, they expel a cloud of microscopic particles capable of carrying viruses and bacteria that act as vectors for respiratory diseases such as flu, COVID-19 or tuberculosis. Understanding how these aerosols disperse in the air is crucial for minimizing the transmission of pathogens in indoor spaces, but their dynamics are complex and depend on many factors: the force of the exhalation, the morphology of the respiratory system, the characteristics of the space, etc. Now, a new study led by researchers from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili has shown that temperature also plays an important role. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-temperature-gaps-clouds-stay-denser.html Soft Matter Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:30:02 EDT news699722042 Summer brings with it the sight of surfers moving seamlessly across wave crests, with ocean waters carrying them along coastlines. A team of scientists has now created a similar phenomenon—with small objects rather than surfers—that can be controlled by humans rather than by nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-tweezers-tiny-surfers.html Soft Matter Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:20:02 EDT news699718101 A research team led by Professor Nenad Miljkovic in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has published a breakthrough study in Nature Physics. The work reports the first experimental discovery of a previously unknown frost propagation mechanism—a "suspended ice bridge"—offering new pathways for anti-frosting surface design. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-plane-ice-bridges-reveal-suppress.html General Physics Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:00:05 EDT news699710881 Glasses are non-crystalline but solid states of matter in which molecules and atoms are not arranged into a regular crystal lattice, but rather in a disordered pattern. Glassy materials are widely used in various settings, for instance, in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and the development of electronics or optical devices. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-molecular-glasses-arrhenius-paradox.html General Physics Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:10:01 EDT news699280613 After traveling hundreds of miles above Earth and spending months aboard the International Space Station, a University of Delaware experiment has returned to campus, bringing new data on how turbulence behaves in microgravity. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-gravity-iss-reveals-particles-turbulent.html General Physics Thu, 28 May 2026 16:20:01 EDT news699202321 A study by researchers at The University of Manchester, carried out alongside the Universities of Melbourne and Copenhagen, could hold the key to understanding the causes of long-term health problems, such as infertility and ovarian cancer. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-coral-infertility-ovarian-cancer-decoding.html Soft Matter Wed, 27 May 2026 11:20:06 EDT news699093819 Whether the dust borne on the violent winds of a tornado or the sugar grains in a swirled cup of coffee, the behavior of particles carried along in turbulence is subject to some similarities—all of them difficult to predict at scale. As described in a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists has developed a first-of-its-kind machine learning framework that models chaotic particle motions in a turbulent flow. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-driven-captures-dynamics-turbulence-scale.html General Physics Tue, 26 May 2026 17:20:03 EDT news699021918 A research team led by Professor Steven Wang, Associate Vice President (Resources Planning) and Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and School of Energy and Environment, has designed a revolutionary capillary structure that can trigger the Leidenfrost effect, offering a practical solution for the temperature-regulated Leidenfrost effect without requiring complex surface engineering. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-surface-thermal-enables-frictionless.html General Physics Tue, 26 May 2026 17:00:04 EDT news699020582 Researchers at University of Tsukuba used advanced techniques to visualize the water flow generated by flutter kicking during front-crawl swimming. They analyzed how this kicking motion generates propulsive force and contributes to body stabilization, demonstrating that the vertical vortices resulting from the alternating left and right leg movements not only impart forward propulsion but also suppress body sway. These results provide a fluid-dynamical explanation of the functional value of the flutter kick. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-visualizing-flutter-vertical-vortices-generate.html Soft Matter Mon, 25 May 2026 13:40:02 EDT news698932622 When they reach the bottom of a soap dispenser, frugal handwashers might try adding water to the bottle to push out the last bit of soap. But usually, the water drills right through the soap and jets out an only slightly sudsy splash. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-physicists-figure-formation-viscous-fingers.html Soft Matter Fri, 22 May 2026 15:40:03 EDT news698670901 Physicists at the University of Bayreuth have investigated the so-called Basset–Boussinesq history force acting on particles in fluids. Due to the difficulty of calculating it, this force is often neglected—a fact that Bayreuth doctoral researcher Frederik Gareis already identified as a secondary school pupil during a student research project with his supervisor. The researchers report their new findings on the history force in Physical Review Fluids. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-overlooked-history-skew-particle-motion.html Soft Matter Tue, 19 May 2026 12:40:03 EDT news698408641 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 "memory of water" or of "water clusters" as a possible explanation for homeopathy, among other things. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-entropy-ions.html General Physics Mon, 18 May 2026 18:30:01 EDT news698344201