Applied Physics

How Rocket Fuel Can Lead To Better Automobile Efficiency

Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the Universe, which makes keeping it in one place difficult. To tap its tremendous potential as a fuel, spacecraft must be able to store liquid hydrogen at extremely low temperatures and then feed it smoothly to rocket ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 5 2012 - 9:48pm

Not Optics: Invisibility From Incident Surface Waves Of Water

A new approach to invisibility cloaking goes beyond transformation optics and those tiresome Harry Potter analogies. It is instead for us at sea to shield floating objects, like oil rigs and ships, from rough waves and is based on the influence of the ocea ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 19 2012 - 4:30pm

Shape-Shifting Self-Assembly Using Janus Spheres

A new class of materials has shown to be able to form dynamic, moving structures. Researchers have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube. The researchers used tiny particles called Janus ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 22 2012 - 12:00pm

Quantum Tornadoes Dance In Fluids

Tornado-like vortexes can be produced in bizarre fluids which are controlled by quantum mechanics, completely unlike normal liquids. There massed ranks of quantum twisters even  line up in rows on a semiconductor chip. By controlling where electrons move ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2012 - 1:30pm

Copper-Doped Bismuth Selenide Could Be The Silcon Of Quantum Computers

Physicists have found elusive Dirac electrons in a superconducting material called copper-doped bismuth selenide- and say it could serve as the silicon of the quantum era.  Quantum computers use atoms to perform processing and memory tasks and for a gener ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 5 2012 - 5:30am

Not Just Christmas: Physicists Invoke Dreidel Metaphor To Discuss Nanowires

A new hypothetical material offers the tantalizing possibility of a signal path smaller than the nanowires for advanced electronics. Yes, theoretical materials. It must be the weekend. Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and postdoctoral ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 17 2012 - 4:56pm

Better Than SST: Energy-Efficient Computer Memory Uses Voltage Rather Than Current

By using voltage instead of current, researchers say they have made major improvements to magnetoresistive random access memory- MRAM-  a faster, higher-capacity class of computer memory. Current, magnetic memory is based on spin-transfer torque (STT), wh ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 16 2012 - 11:48am

'Evaporative Cooling'- Now In Molecules!

Evaporative cooling has been used to cool atoms to extraordinarily low temperatures. The process was used in 1995 to create a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms (see Nobel laureate Carl Wieman and his Science 2.0 art ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2012 - 4:30pm

Press-On Solar Panels: Peel, Stick, Energize

Solar panels are easily susceptible to mechanical problems.  Storms, leaves, you name it- but some of that is because they are rigid.  That rigidity also limits their applications. New flexible, decal-like solar panels that can be peeled off like band-aid ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2012 - 10:43am

Below Absolute Zero- Boltzmann Distribution In Gas Gets Inverted

On the Kelvin Scale, the absolute temperature used by physicists, it is not possible to get colder than zero degrees kelvin. The physical meaning of the temperature of a gas is determined by chaos, the disordered movement of its particles. The colder the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2013 - 10:51pm