All Posts2017-08-28T14:09:55-06:00

ALL POSTS

Real, live scientists sharing cutting-edge research and related classroom activities.

Electric Crystals and their Broken Symmetries

05/19
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Electric Crystals, Part 4

Students learn how some crystals produce electricity when squeezed! This lesson is part 4 of a 4-part student-driven, lecture-free series, in which students will do card sorts, build hands-on models, solve engineering design puzzles, and more!

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How do Crystals get their Shapes?

05/19
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Electric Crystals, Part 3

Students make paper models of crystal unit cells and build a large crystal structure together while reflecting on the role of symmetry in crystal formation. This lesson is part 3 of a 4-part student-driven, lecture-free series, in which students will do card sorts, build hands-on models, solve engineering design puzzles, and more!

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What is a Crystal, Anyway?

05/18
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Electric Crystals, Part 1

Crystals aren't magic, but they are amazing! In this engaging, comic-driven lesson, students do individual and group-based activities to understand the characteristics of crystals (like quartz) versus amorphous solids (like glass). This lesson is part 1 of a 4-part student-driven, lecture-free series in which students will do card sorts, build hands-on models, solve engineering design puzzles, and more!

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Unit Cells and Their Molecular Building Blocks

05/18
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Electric Crystals, Part 2

Through hands-on activities using gumdrops and toothpicks, students will learn about unit cells that make up the repeating structures of crystals like table salt. This lesson is part 2 of a 4-part student-driven, lecture-free series, in which students will do card sorts, build hands-on models, solve engineering design puzzles, and more!

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Plot Twist! The Science of Oreology

04/20
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Fluids and filling

You take a pristine-looking Oreo from a package of seemingly identical sandwich cookies, and you decide to open it up to eat the creme filling first. You gently twist the cookie apart without breaking the chocolate wafers, but the creme sticks to one side only. Why? Happily, the physics of fluids helped two MIT students solve this delicious mystery. Read on to find out what they learned, and how you can test their results at home.

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Connecting the (Liquid Metal) Dots

12/19
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Soft conductive materials
by Aaron Haake, Eric Markvicka

The future of wearable electronics will be smart skins, e-textiles, and other flexible devices. To create these devices, we need new materials that can bend and stretch, but still conduct heat and electricity like traditional metals. Liquid metals to the rescue—read on to learn more!

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Painting with magnets

11/30
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Domains and Disks
by Shireen Adenwalla, Xiaoshan Xu

Magnets curve themselves into beautiful patterns called domains, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. Now that magnetic paint and nail polish are easily available, we can use magnets to create all kinds of magnetic patterns which we can see, photograph, erase and rewrite! Click to find out how YOU can paint with magnets!

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Writing the Magnetic Alphabet

05/12
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Laser memory

Instead of pencil, paper, and eraser, we can use combinations of lasers and magnetic materials to write, read, and and erase information by varying the temperature and magnetic field. Here we apply our laser "pencil" to magnetic "paper" to write the letter “N” (Go Huskers!!). This technique allows us write, erase, and rewrite tiny magnetic memories like those found in your computer hard drive and other devices. Click to learn how it works!

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How Hot Electrons Get Cool

04/20
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Thermalizing nanowires

It’s a hot summer day. You desperately want something cold to drink, but unfortunately, your bottle of root beer has been sitting in a hot car all day. You put it into a bucket full of ice to cool it down. But it’s taking forever! How, you wonder, could you speed the process up? The same question is important for understanding how electronic devices work, and how we can make them work better by controlling the temperature of the electrons that power them. Read on to find out what a bottle of root beer in a cooler full of ice and a nanowire in a vat of liquid helium have in common!

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Building Molecular Circuits with DNA

02/23
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World's smallest diode

Diodes, also known as rectifiers, are a basic component of modern electronics. As we work to create smaller, more powerful and more energy-efficient electronic devices, reducing the size of diodes is a major objective. Recently, a research team from the University of Georgia developed the world's smallest diode using a single DNA molecule. This diode is so small that it cannot be seen by conventional microscopes.

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Ferromagnetic liquids take shape

02/01
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Liquid magnetism
by Robert Streubel, Scott Schrage

You may have heard that there are three main phases of matter: solids, liquids, and gases (plus plasma if you want to get fancy). Liquids can take virtually any shape and deform instantly. Solid materials possess interesting electronic and magnetic properties essential to our daily life. But how about designing rigid liquids with magnetic properties? Impossible? Not anymore. Click to learn more!

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When you’re small, liquids behave like slippery solids

12/08
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Nanoscale fluid mechanics

We think we're pretty familiar with how ordinary liquids behave, but it turns out that some of the basic things we know are no longer true when we look at these liquids on short enough length scales and fast enough time scales. The liquids start to behave more like solids, pushing back when you push on them, and slipping across solid surfaces instead of being dragged along. Click to ride the tiny-but-mighty new wave of nanofluidics!

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What is Viscosity?

07/21
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Honey pours slower than water, but why?

The term may be unfamiliar, but we all have a sense for viscosity. We often think of it colloquially as the “thickness” of a fluid. It’s the property that makes honey pour so differently from water. Fluid dynamicists – scientists and engineers who study how liquids and gases move – tend to think of viscosity in terms of a fluid’s resistance to flowing or changing its shape.

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Neutrons for Nanoscience!

07/20
Neutrons can fly undeterred through lead, but they scatter strongly from hydrogen and oxygen. Thus, the lead container looks transparent to neutrons, while the flowers don
Neutrons can fly undeterred through lead, but they scatter strongly from hydrogen and oxygen. Thus, the lead container looks transparent to neutrons, while the flowers don
Neutron scattering
by Sara Callori, Shireen Adenwalla

When we examine the world around us, we observe its structure, or where things are, as well as its dynamics, or how things move and interact. Likewise, when we investigate a new material, we want to understand its structure and dynamics—where the atoms and molecules are, and what they are doing. To do this, we need measurement techniques that can tell us what is happening at a very small scale. Read on to find out how neutrons come to our rescue!

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Dude, where my atoms at?

04/28
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Crystal diffraction

Have you ever wondered why some materials are hard and others soft, some conduct heat or electricity easily while others don't, some are transparent to light while others are opaque . . . and on and on and on? The material universe is vast and diverse, and while a material's properties depend in part on the elements it is made from, its structure—how it is built from its constituent atoms—can also have wide-ranging effects on how it looks, feels, and behaves. Diffraction is a method that allows us to "see" the atomic structure of materials. Read on to find out how it works!

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Ketchup and oobleck and slime, oh my!

04/21
Kids, like many of us, love playing with non-Newtonian fluids. Photo by tookapic/Pixabay.
Kids, like many of us, love playing with non-Newtonian fluids. Photo by tookapic/Pixabay.
What is a Non-Newtonian Fluid?

Why do so many fluids behave counterintuitively? Many substances in our lives – like oobleck, slime, or Silly Putty – don’t quite behave the way we expect a fluid to, despite some fluid-like properties. These substances fall into a special category: non-Newtonian fluids. Scientifically, this term is a bit of a catch-all for any substances that have a complicated relationship between their apparent viscosity and the force applied to them.

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What is Surface Tension?

11/11
Water droplets atop a coin form a flattened spherical shape due to surface tension. Photo by Nicole Sharp.
Water droplets atop a coin form a flattened spherical shape due to surface tension. Photo by Nicole Sharp.
What is Surface Tension?

Surface tension is a somewhat peculiar force. Its effects are all around us, from bubbles and droplets to cleaning our dishes. Surface tension is an important force in our daily lives. But what is it really? Since it tends to act at the scale of millimeters or smaller, we don’t always notice it. It’s critical, however, for many creatures smaller than us, from water-walking insects to star-nosed moles that sniff out food underwater. So what is surface tension and where does it come from?

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