All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Physics
An electron ruler gauges crystal flaws
Electrons ricocheting through a crystal now make it possible for scientists to discern shifts in crystal lattices as small as a hundredth of an atom's width.
- Materials Science
To make bronze, tin flakes do a wild dance
Upsetting some prevailing ideas about how alloys form, rafts of tin atoms jitterbug madly around on a pure copper surface and leave spots of bronze in their wakes.
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- Tech
Chair becomes personalized posture coach
Pressure imprints made by a person in a chair provide a new type of computer input useful for tracking posture or, perhaps, other clues to someone's activities and state of mind.
- Tech
Pores of glass skin shrink from light
Ultraviolet light can fine-tune the properties of intricately structured, porous films of glass that, among other uses, may make possible the long-sought direct extraction of oxygen and nitrogen gases from air.
- Tech
Pile-o’-polymers breaks up on command
Stacks of polymers designed to break apart in acid solution or at a certain voltage may prove useful for releasing drugs, pesticides, or other compounds where and when needed.
- Physics
Signs of mass-giving particle get stronger
The promising search at a collider in Switzerland for the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—became even more of a cliff-hanger as a new, strong hint of the particle appeared on the eve of the machine's second scheduled demise.
- Tech
Aircraft trick may give big rigs a gentle lift
Using sheet-like jets of air to control aerodynamic drag and lift—a technology first developed for aircraft—may boost gas mileage and improve braking and handling of tractor-trailer trucks.
- Physics
Protons may waltz off nuclear dance floor
Detection of proton pairs simultaneously emitted from neon nuclei raises the possibility that a new and long-sought window into the nucleus has been found and unlocked.
- Physics
Electron cloud mirrors fossil life-form
Remarkable molecules whose electron clouds would resemble now-extinct marine creatures called trilobites could appear in experiments on ultracold atom clouds known as Bose-Einstein condensates, theorists predict.
- Physics
Goo’s melting could keep battery cool
Using the sometimes dangerous heat of lithium batteries to melt wax or similar materials may keep the potent cells cool enough for safe use in electric vehicles while also boosting the batteries' performance.
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