(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of Tokyo have developed 3D holograms that can be touched with bare hands. Generally, holograms can't be felt because they're made only of light. But the new technology adds ...
Boston University researchers, Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, released a paper in Physical Review B demonstrating ...
General Physics
Mar 7, 2019
2
20152
When placed in an acoustic field, small objects experience a net force that can be used to levitate the objects in air. In a new study, researchers have experimentally demonstrated the acoustic levitation of a 50-mm (2-inch) ...
Acoustic tractor beams use the power of sound to hold particles in mid-air, and unlike magnetic levitation, they can grab most solids or liquids. For the first time University of Bristol engineers have shown it is possible ...
General Physics
Jan 22, 2018
16
4735
(PhysOrg.com) -- Currently, most nuclear fusion power plants are large, expensive projects that will take decades to benefit from. But a startup company in Vancouver, Canada, called General Fusion is taking the fast track ...
Cloaking devices play a pivotal role in many sci-fi television programs. Scientists are now working to take this technology from the dramatic realm of science fiction and make it real. Amanda D. Hanford, at Pennsylvania State ...
General Physics
May 10, 2018
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Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have built the world's smallest and best acoustic amplifier. And they did it using a concept that was all but abandoned for almost 50 years.
General Physics
Jun 2, 2021
0
417
Optical fibres are our global nervous system, transporting terabytes of data across the planet in the blink of an eye.
Optics & Photonics
Aug 19, 2019
1
765
Controlling the flow of heat through semiconductor materials is an important challenge in developing smaller and faster computer chips, high-performance solar panels, and better lasers and biomedical devices.
Nanophysics
Nov 10, 2016
0
3363
A team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in collaboration with Ultrahaptics have built the world's first sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves.
General Physics
Oct 27, 2015
12
6759
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics can be seen in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries.
Hearing is one of the most crucial means of survival in the animal world, and speech is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human development and culture. So it is no surprise that the science of acoustics spreads across so many facets of our society—music, medicine, architecture, industrial production, warfare and more. Art, craft, science and technology have provoked one another to advance the whole, as in many other fields of knowledge. Lindsay's 'Wheel of Acoustics' is a well accepted overview of the various fields in acoustics.
The word "acoustic" is derived from the Greek word ἀκουστικός (akoustikos), meaning "of or for hearing, ready to hear" and that from ἀκουστός (akoustos), "heard, audible", which in turn derives from the verb ἀκούω (akouo), "I hear".
The Latin synonym is "sonic", after which the term sonics used to be a synonym for acoustics and later a branch of acoustics. Frequencies above and below the audible range are called "ultrasonic" and "infrasonic", respectively.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
