If you have a smartphone, take it out and run your fingers along the glass surface. It's cool to the touch, incredibly thin and strong, and almost impervious to scratching. You're now in contact with a "smart material."
Condensed Matter
Nov 27, 2013
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It is only a couple of molecules thick, and could not be thinner: the sheet of glass that scientists at the University of Ulm and Cornell University have discovered by accident. This discovery has now been acknowledged as ...
Nanomaterials
Oct 7, 2013
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Television sets have changed dramatically in recent years, with the introduction of flat-screen LCD, plasma and LED monitors. These new technologies have virtually eliminated the old-fashioned cathode ray tube (CRT) once ...
Other
Sep 26, 2013
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Hold a magnifying glass over the driveway on a sunny day and it will focus sunlight into a single beam. Hold a prism in front of the window and the light will spread out into a perfect rainbow. Lenses like these have been ...
General Physics
Aug 12, 2013
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A new transparent, bioinspired coating makes ordinary glass tough, self-cleaning and incredibly slippery, a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard School of Engineering ...
Materials Science
Aug 2, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Researchers at Yale have developed a way to alter the microanatomy of glass and measure how the changes affect the material's overall character—offering new possibilities for tailoring glass with unusual strength ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 18, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Results from a microgravity experiment suggest that the rubble and dust covering asteroids and comets can feel changes in force-chains between particles over much larger distances than on Earth, making these ...
Space Exploration
Jul 4, 2013
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(Phys.org) —For the first time, scientists have mapped the structure of a metallic glass on the atomic scale, bringing them closer to understanding where the liquid ends and the solid begins in glassy materials.
Condensed Matter
Jun 10, 2013
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Bubbles in a champagne glass may add a festive fizz to the drink, but microscopic bubbles that form in a material called metallic glass can signal serious trouble. In this normally high-strength material, bubbles may indicate ...
Condensed Matter
Jun 5, 2013
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Many solids are produced from melting. Depending on how quickly they cool off, invariably, internal tensile stresses begin to build up. One example are Prince Rupert's Drops, or Dutch tears: you can hit their thick end with ...
Condensed Matter
May 28, 2013
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