Knots are indispensable tools for such human activities as sailing, fishing and rock climbing, (not to mention, tying shoes). But tying a knot in a lacelike strand of DNA, measuring just billionths of a meter in length, requires ...
Bio & Medicine
Nov 3, 2018
0
280
Just like any long polymer chain, DNA tends to form knots. Using technology that allows them to stretch DNA molecules and image the behavior of these knots, MIT researchers have discovered, for the first time, the factors ...
General Physics
May 3, 2018
0
235
A new study by mechanical engineers at UC Berkeley finally shows why your shoelaces may keep coming untied. It's a question that everyone asks, often after stopping to retie their shoes, yet one that nobody had investigated ...
General Physics
Apr 11, 2017
2
2581
Got rope? Then try this experiment: Cross both ends, left over right, then bring the left end under and out, as if tying a pair of shoelaces. If you repeat this sequence, you get what's called a "granny" knot. If, instead, ...
General Physics
Sep 8, 2015
12
392
(Phys.org)—A combined team of researchers from the University of Kiel in Germany and the University of Maryland in the U.S. has created a shape memory alloy that is able to be bent and snap back to its original form up ...
Large flakes of graphene oxide are the essential ingredient in a new recipe for robust carbon fiber created at Rice University.
Nanomaterials
Jul 8, 2013
2
0
(Phys.org)—A group of chemistry researchers working in a lab at Cambridge University have succeeded in causing a group of molecules to form themselves into trefoil knots. The team was working on combinatorial chemistry ...
Just as sat-nav did away with the need to argue over the best route home, scientists from the University of Surrey have developed a new method to find the optimal routes for future space missions without the need to waste ...
Space Exploration
Apr 17, 2024
0
150
A trio of chemists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, working with a colleague from the University of Western Ontario, has tied the smallest knot ever, using just 54 atoms. In their ...
Helical molecules, similarly to a corkscrew, have a spiral shape that can be either left- or right-turning. Such "chiral molecules" can collectively organize (assemble) into large left- or right-handed twisted structures. ...
Polymers
Oct 4, 2023
0
10
