Heat leaves atom clusters cold
Clumps of sodium atoms buck the thermodynamic trend
Not all clusters are the same
Smaller clusters tend to have elongated shapes, and the energy of formation is essentially independent of the number of atoms in the cluster. Larger clusters are spherical and the formation energy is ...
Quantum heat flow in the lab
Quantized electrical conductance was confirmed in experiments with very narrow conducting wires in the late 1980s. The electrons move through the wire along quantum channels, each of which contributes...
Doubly magic nickel-48 surprises theorists
The name magic number comes from the shell model of the nucleus. The combined quantum mechanical effects of protons and neutrons in the nucleus can create energy shells similar to the electron energy ...
Understanding avalanches
Snow avalanches occur when the mass of the snow overcomes the frictional resistance of the slope. This usually takes place when snow layers near the slope are loosened by spring rains or vibrations. D...
Knots make polymers weaker
Polymers are long chain-like molecules made up of smaller molecules called monomers. It is well known that polymer chains often tie themselves in knots, but it was not clear how this influenced the me...
New light on sonoluminescence
Sascha Hilgenfeldt, Siegfried Grossman and Detlef Lohse extended the model by making the bubble’s temperature dependent on its volume and by making an allowance of the small emissivity of the we...
Supersonic plasticity
Gumbsch and Gao also found that the supersonic speeds only occur when the stress is applied at a single point. At very low strains, the deformations travel subsonically. At intermediate strains, howev...
Electronics with single atoms
Scheer and colleagues used a scanning tunnelling microscope, a mechanically controlled break junction, and lithography to fabricate various simple electronic circuits. These devices measured the effec...
