News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a new way of controlling the drying patterns formed by re-crystallizing salt. They found that the coffee ring effect can be used to pin the edge of drying droplets, creating a range of different geometric patterns. The same principles may be applied to understand and improve the adhesion of printer ink to surfaces and the manufacture of film-based devices.

It provides the basis for solar energy and global communications: the photoelectric effect. Albert Einstein described it over a century ago. For the first time, scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), and the TU Wien have now measured the absolute duration of the light absorption and of the resulting photoelectron which is released from a solid body.

A team of researchers, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) presents alternative approaches for versatile future applications of plastic magnets.

For fusion power plants to be effective, scientists must find a way to trigger the low-to-high confinement transition, associated with zonal flows of plasma. Theoretically, these consist of both a stationary flow and one that oscillates at the geodesic acoustic mode. For the first time, researchers have detected GAM at two different points simultaneously within the reactor. This experimental setup will aid investigating the physics of zonal flows, and their role in the L-H transition.

A system made of just a handful of particles acts just like larger systems, allowing scientists to study quantum behavior more easily.

Physicists at the University of Bath have discovered how to manipulate and control individual molecules for a millionth of a billionth of a second, after being intrigued by some seemingly odd results.

An improvement to the catalyst that converts methane to syngas could lead to a more economical process.

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have produced the most precise picture to date of population dynamics in fluctuating feast-or-famine conditions. Professor Seppe Kuehn, a biological physicist, and his graduate student Jason Merritt found that bacterial population density is a function of both the frequency and the amplitude of nutrient fluctuations.