Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Physics
String Trio: Novel instrument strums like guitar, rings like bell
A new type of musical instrument, equipped with Y-shaped strings, may be the first of a family of string instruments with unusual overtones typically heard in bells or gongs.
- Physics
As waters part, polygons appear
When rapidly swirled inside a stationary bucket, liquids can form whirlpools of surprising shapes, such as triangles and hexagons.
- Materials Science
Gripping Tale: Metal oozes in nanotubes’ grasp
Carbon nanotubes can squeeze substances inside them with such high pressures that even hard metals squish like putty.
- Physics
A well-spun egg also jumps
Physicists have demonstrated that spinning a hard-boiled egg horizontally makes it jump into the air.
- Materials Science
Feeling cagey
Researchers have discovered that gold can take the shape of nanoscale, hollow cages.
- Physics
Confined gas rejects compromise
Pairs of tiny gas clouds of unequal energies mixing inside narrow tubes retain their original energy differences.
- Physics
Universe in Flux: Constant of nature might have changed
Researchers have found signs that one of the constants of nature has undergone a subtle shift since the universe's infancy.
- Physics
Abuzz about uranium
A type of atomic vibration never before seen in ordinary solid materials has been observed in uranium.
- Materials Science
Microbe holds fast
A common aquatic microbe makes a sticky substance that produces the strongest biological adhesion ever discovered.
- Materials Science
Wired Viruses: New electrodes could make better batteries
With the aid of a bacteria-infecting virus, researchers have engineered cobalt oxide-and-gold nanowires that can be used as electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.
- Physics
Revealing Covert Actions
The recent merger of high-speed video technology and centuries-old techniques for seeing ordinarily invisible fluctuations of the air is enabling engineers to visualize and study the previously unseen, large-scale behavior of shock waves in explosions and aerodynamics research.
- Materials Science
Spin City
Researchers are using a technique called electrospinning to create fibrous mats that have potential applications in drug delivery, wound care, and tissue engineering.
