You know I am a fan of good infographics.
I saw and fell in love with these animated gifs by Seattle designer, Eleanor Lutz. I think they are a beautiful marriage of science and art. See more about this project and Eleanor’s other work by clicking here.
When I was an undergraduate biology/fine arts major, I came across an amazing slide in our biology department’s invertebrate collection. Under the microscope was what looked like an intricate medieval rose window from a cathedral. It was in fact a slide of diatoms – one-celled creatures that grow delicately detailed silica shells – which had been dyed to look like stained glass. Both sides of my brain – the scientific side and the artistic side – were delighted.
I recently found this video about a man who creates wonderful detailed designs such as the one that impressed me as an undergraduate. Klaus Kemp, “the Diatomist,” is also fascinated by the variety of detail and form that are expressed by diatoms and he has created an art form that requires infinite precision
“Another way to appreciate diatoms is to realize that they give us every fifth breath, by the oxygen they liberate during photosynthesis.”
This quote is from the Tree of Life project and talks about the importance of diatoms in fixing carbon in the atmosphere.
Read more about diatoms here at the Plankton Chronicles.
Reblogged from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News
As a high school student at a study program in Japan, Brian Trease would fold wrappers from fast-food cheeseburgers into cranes. He loved discovering different origami techniques in library books.
Today, Trease, a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, thinks about how the principles of origami could be used for space-bound devices.
“This is a unique crossover of art and culture and technology,” he said.
Origami has been the subject of serious mathematical analysis only within the last 40 years, Trease said. There is growing interest in integrating the concepts of origami with modern technologies.
“You think of it as ancient art, but people are still inventing new things, enabled by mathematical tools,” Trease said.
Origami Solar Array Prototype from JPLraw on Vimeo.
Read the rest of the story by clicking here.
map credit: John M Nelson
This post is re-blogged from Why? Because Science , with thanks.
Earth’s massive shifting tectonic plates are visible in this gorgeous diagram of our planet showing the location, intensity and frequency of earthquakes since 1898. The brighter the fluorescent green, the more seismically active the location. The Pacific plate, smack bang in the centre of this map, certainly prefers its martinis shaken and not stirred, with some of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history originating along its western boundary.
For more mind blowing maps that give you a real perspective on our planet, check out the following post on The Mind Unleashed.
This following post is reblogged from Just English. Just English is one of the blogs I follow because it often has good advice and interesting tips about writing in general. I think the post has applicability to CLiPS because we are often called on to communicate technical ideas where clear, concise writing is particularly important.
5 editor’s secrets to help you write like a pro
by Sonia SimoneProfessional writers get work because they hit their deadlines, they stay on their message, and they don’t throw too many tantrums. Some pros have a great writing voice or a superb style, but as often as not, that gets in the way. When you know that the best word is “prescient,” it’s hard to swallow when an account manager tells you the client won’t know what it means.
Professional writers rely on editors to fix their clunks. Like good gardeners, sensitive editors don’t hack away—we prune and gently shape. When we’ve done a great job, the page looks just like it did before, only better. It’s the page the writer intended to write.
Editing, like writing, takes time to learn. But here are five fixes I make with nearly every project. Learn to make them yourself and you’ll take your writing to a more professional, marketable, and persuasive level.
1. Sentences can only do one thing at a time.
Have you ever heard a four-year-old run out of breath before she can finish her thought? I edit a lot of sentences that work the same way. You need a noun, you need a verb, you might need an object. Give some serious thought to stopping right there.
Sentences are building blocks, not bungee cords; they’re not meant to be stretched to the limit. I’m not saying you necessarily want a Hemingway-esque series of clipped short sentences, but most writers benefit from dividing their longest sentences into shorter, more muscular ones.
2. Paragraphs can only do one thing at a time.
A paragraph supports a single idea. Construct complex arguments by combining simple ideas that follow logically. Every time you address a new idea, add a line break. Short paragraphs are the most readable; few should be more than three or four sentences long. This is more important if you’re writing for the Web.
3. Look closely at -ing
Nouns ending in -ing are fine. (Strong writing, IT consulting, great fishing.) But constructions like “I am running,” “a forum for building consensus,” or “The new team will be managing” are inherently weak. Rewrite them to “I run,” “a forum to build consensus,” and “the team will manage.” You’re on the right track when the rewrite has fewer words (see below).
(If for some insane reason you want to get all geeky about this, you can read the Wikipedia article on gerunds and present participles. But you don’t have to know the underlying grammatical rules to make this work. Rewrite -ing when you can, and your writing will grow muscles you didn’t know it had.)
4. Omit unnecessary words.
I know we all heard this in high school, but we weren’t listening. (Mostly because it’s hard.) It’s doubly hard when you’re editing your own writing—we put all that work into getting words onto the page, and by god we need a damned good reason to get rid of them.
Here’s your damned good reason: extra words drain life from your work. The fewer words used to express an idea, the more punch it has. Therefore:
Summer months
Regional level
The entire country
On a daily basis (usually best rewritten to “every day”)
She knew that it was good.
Very
(I just caught one above: four-year-old little girl)
You can nearly always improve sentences by rewriting them in fewer words.
5. Reframe 90% of the passive voice.
French speakers consider an elegantly managed passive voice to be the height of refinement. But here in the good old U.S. (or Australia, Great Britain, etc.), we value action. We do things is inherently more interesting than Things are done by us. Passive voice muddies your writing; when the actor is hidden, the action makes less sense.
Bonus: Use spell-checkThere’s no excuse for teh in anything more formal than a Twitter tweet.
Also, “a lot” and “all right” are always spelled as two words. You can trust me, I’m an editor.
Easy reading is damned hard writing.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Why study STEM? Why stay in school? If you are reading this post, you already know there are multiple reasons why STEM education is a good choice. The chart below shows some complementary evidence of the value of a STEM degree.
Ref.: Anne Flaherty in an AP story.
For the full story, click this link.
Woman’s Silk Chinese Robe from the 19th Century
Spider Silk has been getting a lot of press recently for its exceptional strength. Silk from the silk worm however, is also being used in unusual ways. Silk is, of course, a natural polymer. Its molecular structure is unusual for a polypeptide, incorporating a high proportion of the amino acid glycine. The glycine segments promote formation of flat sheets that can pack tightly together adding to silk’s strength and flexibility. Researchers at Tufts University are working with silk in a new way. They have developed a technique for producing absorbable silk fasteners for potential use in surgical procedures.
“Silk has many uses, from neckties to sheets for the top 1 percent. But researchers at Tufts University and Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently came up with a truly novel use: silk screws and plates used to mend broken bones. Typically, “fixation devices” to repair broken bones are made of metal alloys. But metal implants can cause infections or corrode. So a second round of surgery often is necessary to remove them once the bone heals. Resorbable devices made from polymers can cause inflammatory reactions, and they’re so soft that surgeons first must drill holes in the bone and etch them with threading to hold the screws in place. Not so for silk screws. Silk thread is as strong as steel and is safely absorbed by the body. To make the devices, the Boston team dissolved silk proteins harvested from silkworm cocoons in alcohol, then poured the solution into molds and baked it. In a test using 28 screws implanted in six lab rats, none failed and all maintained their mechanical integrity.”
Credit: Thomas K. Grose
PRISM, Journal of the American Society of Engineering Education
Molecular structure of silk fibroin protein
Silk’s sheet structure
This post is about communicating scientific ideas so that they can be widely understood. Carl Zimmer, who writes for National Graphic, the New York Times, and maintains several science-related blogs, is the author of the following:
“I’ve taught writing semi-regularly over the past few years. Over that time, I’ve come to realize that one of the biggest challenges in learning how to write about the natural world is to learn how to skillfully wield beautiful, plain language . Scientists and scientists-in-training often lard their writing with jargon, rather than looking for a conversational equivalent. This addiction to jargon can leave a piece of writing sterile. It can mystify everyone except the experts–which is a bad strategy if you aspire to write for the public. An addiction to jargon can even create catastrophic misunderstandings. Readers may apply a non-technical definition for a word that a scientist uses with a very technical meaning in mind. (Think of “theory” as a hunch.)
All writers, scientist and non-scientist alike, can be tempted by clichés and other useless constructions. Clichés like “Holy Grail” are just lazy surrenders to the challenge of inventing fresh phrases. And “miracle cure” is really just a cynical promise of false hope.
So I’ve gotten very persnickety about the individual words and phrases that students choose. I’ve built up a list of “banned words” that I’ve come across in assignments and which I never want to see in class again. It’s not that those words are absolutely wrong in terms of their meaning. It’s just that writers–both new and veteran–should try to do better. My index of banned words was a pretty modest enterprise–just a blog post that I updated from time to time (either from assignments or from suggestions from weary readers). But recently I got a chance to turn it into an interesting experiment.
The opportunity came to me thanks to Charles Best. Best is a former public school teacher who founded the philanthropy site Donors Choose, where you can give money for supplies requested by public school teachers. Wearied of dealing with tired, redundant, or pretentious language in writing, he decided to launch a web site called Irregardless. It allows people to crowd-source a list of words and phrases that writers should avoid, explain why, and offer alternatives.
What’s interesting about this site is that you can use it in a number of interesting ways. You can just read through the entries. You can pick out a list made by someone in particular. Author Reza Aslan explains why he loathes “essentializing the sacred,” for example.
You can also check your own writing. Choose the “check your writing” box, and paste text into the field that appears. You can choose to run your writing by all the tips, or just use a style guide. Best asked me to set up a science writing guide, and so I’ve poached my banned words, along with other good sources (like this paper). If you’re interested, check out Carl Zimmer’s Science Writing Guide at http://irregardless.ly/carlzimmer
You’ll see any flagged words highlighted in your text, with comments and suggestions appearing next to them. It can even distinguish between different uses of a word (I dislike “access” as a verb.)
Both Irregardless and my own style guide are works in progress. If you find any bugs, let the owners of the site know. And remember that you can add your own tips too. If you think I need to add a particular word to my own guide, let me know (this blog post’s comment thread is a good place). I can’t promise I’ll dislike it too, but it’s always worth learning about a word that sets someone on edge.”
Credit: The Loom
When I was in school and learned about the wavelengths of light, I felt I was cheated because I could only see colors in the “visible” spectrum – such a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum! I wanted to see ultraviolet and infrared and more. I recently read that some people with a condition called aphakia are reported to be able to see ultraviolet wavelengths. I also read that the artist Claude Monet was said to have this condition due to cataract surgery he had when that technique was in its infancy. (These reports are from Wikipedia, so make of them what you will.) In any case, you have heard about bees that target flowers based on their ultraviolet signatures. Here is a version of Saturn’s rings with their ultraviolet signatures rendered in color.
This post is reblogged from Lights in the Sky.
You don’t typically see Saturn’s rings looking like this, but then you can’t see in ultraviolet like Cassini (or many insects) can! The image above was acquired by the UVIS (UltraViolet Imaging Spectrograph) instrument aboard the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on June 30, 2004, just as it was entering orbit around Saturn.
The area shown here is about 10,000 km (6,200 miles) across. It’s a small section of ring segments… just a portion of Saturn’s magnificent expanse of rings. Part of the C ring, toward Saturn, is along the left, and the inner edge of the B ring begins just right of the center. The colors are related to the composition of the ring particles; blue and green colors are from bright water ice, reds are rings with darker, “dirtier” particles.
While the colors aren’t “real” per se — our eyes simply can’t see UV light — the association of colors we can see to specific UV wavelengths allows scientists to accurately observe relative differences in the ring segments.
“It is cool that we can pick our own colors in the pictures we produce,” said Dr. Larry W. Esposito, a professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado and UVIS Principal Investigator. “No person has ever seen ultraviolet light, although some butterflies can. Our pictures may thus represent a ‘butterfly’s-eye view’ of the Saturn system.”
Read more about the Cassini mission here.
This article is re-blogged from Matt Shipman, writing for The Abstract at North Carolina State University.
Captain America’s shield is famous for absorbing tremendous amounts of kinetic energy, from an artillery shell to a punch from the Hulk – keeping Cap not only safe, but on his feet. What’s going on here?
It’s tough to explain how the shield works, in part because it behaves differently under different circumstances. Sometimes the shield is thrown and becomes embedded in a wall; but sometimes it bounces off of walls, ricocheting wildly. Sometimes the shield seems to easily absorb tremendous force; but sometimes it is damaged by the attacks of Cap’s most powerful foes.
“However, from a scientific perspective, it’s important to remember that we’re talking about the first law of thermodynamics,” says Suveen Mathaudhu, a program manager in the materials science division of the U.S. Army Research Office, adjunct materials science professor at NC State University and hardcore comics fan. “Energy is conserved. It doesn’t disappear, it just changes form.
“When enormous energy, such as a blow from Thor’s hammer, strikes Cap’s shield, that energy needs to go somewhere.”
Normally, that energy would need to be either stored or converted into heat or sound. But comic-book readers and moviegoers know that Cap’s shield usually doesn’t give off waves of heat or roaring shrieks (that shockwave from Thor’s hammer in The Avengers film notwithstanding).
“That absence of heat and sound means that the energy has to be absorbed somehow; the atomic bonds in the shield – which is made of vibranium – must be able to store that energy in some form,” Mathaudhu says.
For example, in the comics, no less an authority than Molecule Man insinuates that something about the shield’s molecular structure is “weirdest of them all.” Based on his observations, Mathaudhu notes that the shield essentially acts as a battery. (After all, the elemental power source Tony Stark “discovers” in Iron Man 2 is also vibranium.)
But the shield also appears able to function as a capacitor, able to handle large amounts of energy very quickly. (Oversimplified explanation: capacitors – like the flash on your smartphone – absorb and release energy quickly; batteries – like, well, batteries – absorb and release energy at controlled rates.)
This means that Cap’s shield is a supercapacitor (perhaps vibranium atoms assemble akin to graphene?), able to function as a hybrid of a battery and a capacitor.
But how does the shield release all that stored energy that it has saved up?
“If the energy is being stored in the bonds between the shield’s atoms, that could explain the variability in the shield’s physical characteristics,” Mathaudhu says.
For example, maybe its supercapacitor-like nature explains where the shield gets the energy it needs to ricochet off of multiple surfaces before returning to Cap’s hand (as it does so often in the comics) – or how the shield is able to unleash enough force in one blow to cut into the Winter Soldier’s super-strong bionic arm (as seen in the most recent Captain American movie).
Part of it is Cap’s strength, of course, but the shield itself appears to be playing a role.
Could tiny little atoms really contain that kind of energy? It’s important to remember just how much energy is contained in atomic bonds: both the atomic bomb and conventional nuclear energy facilities are powered by the splitting of atoms. [Note: Commenter St. Chris caught a mistake here – I conflated atomic bonds with nuclear bonds. Very different. His comment is here.]
And we’re all familiar with real-world examples of technology that converts kinetic energy into stored energy, like the flywheel and generator tech that uses the friction from stepping on the brakes in a Prius to charge the car’s batteries.
As is so often the case in comics, there’s a kernel of scientific truth here – Cap’s shield just takes it one step further.
More about viscosity in this experiment run at Trinity College Dublin, looking at a drop of pitch falling – for 69 years.
Pitch and Viscosity
For the last 69 years, there has been an experiment running at Trinity College Dublin where I work, consisting of a glass funnel with pitch tar inside that is very slowly dripping out. Pitch is an extremely slow-moving fluid, so each drop takes about ten years to form and fall, and this is the first time it’s been captured on video: (above).
Even knowing that pitch is extremely slow-moving and viscous, I still felt an expectation watching the video that once the drop fell, it would merge with the bottom pitch. But of course it doesn’t: it falls over, and that merging will take a long time. Pitch is twenty billion times more viscous than water; for comparison, honey is only about a thousand times more viscous. So pitch flows more slowly and is harder to stir, but why?Picture a drop of liquid up close. The liquid is comprised of molecules, which are moving somewhat freely but also interacting with each other (if they were moving completely independently, the substance would be a gas). But the molecules at the edge of the drop are experiencing additional forces, interacting with either the air or the container around the drop in addition to the other molecules in the drop. So if we tilt the drop, or try to push it through a tube, those edge molecules are going to flow more slowly, if they are next to a containing wall, or more quickly, if they are next to air. Different layers in the liquid are more or less easy to move, and this means that under the same impetus to flow, the layers end up moving at different speeds. So there is actually friction within the drop, between different layers of molecules! The friction due to intermolecular interactions is stronger in some liquids than others, which is where we get high-viscosity liquids like pitch and low-viscosity liquids like water. Both are subject to the same physical laws, but the strength of intermolecular forces slows the pitch down by an incredible amount. And that’s the microscopic explanation for the macroscopic phenomenon we call viscosity.
For more about an older and better known pitch drop experiment in Australia, which has yet to drop, and differing senses of time in general, I heartily recommend this Radiolab episode.
Article by Jessamyn Fairfield, posted July , 2013, on letstalkaboutscience
“Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation,”Arthur C. Clarke declared in 1964, and yet he got it astoundingly right in his own predictions, including his 1968 vision for the iPad. He wasn’t alone — Isaac Asimov predicted online education, Douglas Adams predicted ebooks, Ray Bradbury predicted that we would reach Mars (though, so far, we’ve only done so with robotic extensions of ourselves), and Jules Verne envisioned the hi-tech Nautilus “at a time when even a can-opener [was] considered an exciting new concept.” In fact, science-fiction authors have a formidable track record of predicting the future — but why?
That’s exactly what Joe Hanson of It’s Okay To Be Smart — who has previously explained the science of why we kiss and the mathematical odds of finding your soulmate — explores in this fantastic short film for PBS:
This post comes from Brainpickings.org
The Five Second Rule Explored
Scientific American published an article on Mar 25, 2014, written by Larry Greenemeier, titled Fact of Fiction?: The Five Second Rule for Dropped Food. This article explores the truth behind the five second rule, the cultural convention that food dropped on the floor is immune to whatever resides there for five seconds.
The researchers mentioned in the article, undergraduates at Aston University’s School of Life and Health Sciences in England, lead by microbiology professor Anthony Hilton, found time does impact bacterial transfer from a surface to food. Their methodology involved two types of bacterial strains, and several surface and food types. These surface types covered carpeting, laminates, and tiled surfaces, while food types involved toast, pasta, biscuits and a sticky sweets.
Using this experimental setup, this group found moist foods left on a surface over 30 seconds had 10x the bacterial load as food left on the floor for only three seconds. They also found any food’s brief impact with a surface transferred some bacterial. However, this group also found dry foods dropped on carpeting had the least transfer of bacteria. They theorized, as food settles into a surface, more bacteria are able to come in contact with it as a function of it spreading across a surface. Or, as dropped food settles over time, it spreads over a a large, flat surface area faster.
Based on a gender-based survey, they also found men were more likely to consume food dropped on the floor after five seconds passed.
While interesting, from this article discussion, are there any questions you would want these researchers to explore?
…
Here are mine. I am curious as to how other bacteria transfer from a surface to food? Does the bacteria’s life-cycle state affect its transfer? Bacteria can create spores to survive unfavorable conditions. Would these survival tactics affect transfer rates? How is dirt or particulate matter transfer to food affected by surface and food type? Does food dropped on to carpeting pick-up more dirt because carpeting typically can adsorb more dirt than smooth flooring? If so, would this dirt transfer affect bacterial transfer? And, what kind of carpeting did they use to produce these results? When I think of carpeting, I think of loose-knit materials. And, it seems to me these materials would produce a higher degree of contact between the food and surface. This last point also makes me consider areal density. How do we know an equivalent amount of bacteria are loaded onto equivalent surface areas of a flat surface and a highly textured carpet?
The bottom-line is, this is a fun article–and it may produce some interesting science. But, food dropped on the floor will come back with some bacteria. And, maybe, you are okay with that.
Researchers are using the structure of polymer fibers and their shape-memory characteristics to mimic muscle fibers. This story is from ABC Science, reporting on the article published in Science:
Using household tools such as an electric drill and hair dryer, researchers have turned nylon fibres into artificial muscles that can lift 100 times more weight than human muscles.
The work, published today in Science, shows that extensive twisting of common fishing line and sewing thread leads to a spring-like coil with super-strength qualities.
Collaborator Professor Geoff Spinks says it is a much-sought breakthrough that could open the door to the use of artificial muscles in clothing and prosthetic manufacture, robotics, and as a green energy source.
Spinks, from the Australian Research Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the University of Wollongong, says the discovery is “almost embarrassing”.
“It is ironic that we spent all these years looking at exotic materials — and of course the lessons we learned from those years led us to this dramatic discovery — but it is remarkable that such ordinary materials can do such amazing things,” he says.
The breakthrough is the result of a 15-year international collaboration led by scientists at the University of Texas.
“We knew from our previous work with carbon nanotube artificial muscles that having a particular geometry was critical, and that was a helically twisted fibrous structure,” says Spinks.
“We knew in nylon fibres the molecules are aligned within that solid fibrous structure, so we just wondered whether the individual polymer molecules would act in the same way that was happening with the carbon nanotube system.”
“So it was just a matter of getting these commercially available polymer fibres from the fishing store and twisting them and seeing what happened.”
Read more at ABC Science.
Did you know that 25% of Americans do not know that the earth orbits the sun? This finding is from a recent NSF survey on scientific literacy.
Ref: Discovery News via Maggie’s Farm.
I could not find that survey, but I did find this one from the PEW Research Center.
How did you do?
This post is reblogged from Gunsmoke and Knitting.
Under the microscope – photographs by Fernan Federici
“Fernan Federicias microscopic images of plants, bacteria, and crystals are a classic example of finding art in unexpected places. A couple years ago, Federici was working on his Ph.D. in biological sciences at Cambridge University studying self-organization, the process by which things organize themselves spontaneously and without direction. Like a flock of birds flying together.
More specifically, he was using microscopes and a process called fluorescence microscopy to see if he could identify these kinds of patterns on a cellular level. In fluorescence microscopy, scientists shine a particular kind of light at whatever theyare trying to illuminate and then that substance identifies itself by shining a different color or light back. Sometimes researchers will also attach proteins that they know emit a particular kind of light to substances as a kind of identifier. In the non-microscopic world, it as like using a black light on a stoner poster.
Federici grew up with photography as a hobby, so looking through the microscope at all the different colors and patterns he realized that the process was highly visual. He hadnat seen many images like what he was seeing published for the general public, so he asked for permission from his adviser Jim Haseloff to post the photos on his Flickr site. Today that site is filled with pages and pages of microscopic images, some of which are from his work, while others are just for fun.”
“Microscopy is always serious science,a says Federici, who is now a researcher at Pontificia Univerisdad Catolica de Chile. aFor us [in the department at Cambridge] this was something we looked at as outreach. It was a way to bring this scientific data to the general public.” (text via techhumorblog)
Reblogged from Hovercraftdoggy.
In a recent article by The Economist, published January 13th, 2014, “How can you search for time travelers?” the authors addressed how you could search for time travelers. As mentioned by the article, several theorists have postulated how you could build a time machine. But looking for a time traveler would be a much simpler way to establish proof-of-concept. Unfortunately, finding time travelers is not as easy as watching Dr. Who. One experiment placed invitations to a party only for time travelers in time capsules in-frequently read library books. The idea was simple: some one from the future would stumble upon these invitations and attend the party. Yet none of the party’s attendees claimed to be from the future. Dr.
Stephen Hawking tried this experiment too, but he sent out invitations after the event took place. His results proved similar. No one came. Others have resorted to internet searches. Their signal to detect time travelers involved inconsistencies between news stories and someone’s blog entry. They reasoned, if someone posted an entry suggesting future knowledge, this suggestive evidence may help point to someone traveling through time. Their search consisted of wide-spread, high-impact news stories. But no evidence has yet emerged.
Click here to find the full article.
“How ‘big data’ is changing lives
Data is increasingly defining us – from the information we share on the web, to that collected by the numerous companies with whom we interact. Intrigued by the sheer scales involved, photojournalist Rick Smolan wanted to see how data was transforming the world.”
What would you like to learn more about?
This story about “genius” materials – and research about the materials, and their applications – is re-posted from NASA Science News.
These materials have the ability to self-assemble, which means that on the molecular level, under certain conditions, the molecules have the ability to move around into new configurations, leading to materials with new properties. Research that is done at the International Space Station is particularly interesting because gravity does not have an effect on the materials on this space-based laboratory.
“If you have a smartphone, take it out and run your fingers along the glass surface. It’s cool to the touch, incredibly thin and strong, and almost impervious to scratching. You’re now in contact with a “smart material.”
Smart materials don’t occur naturally. Instead, they are designed by human engineers working at the molecular level to produce substances made-to-order for futuristic applications. The Corning Gorilla Glass that overlays the displays of many smartphones is a great example. It gets it toughness, in part, from “fat” potassium ions stuffed into the empty spaces between old-fashioned glass molecules. When the molten glass cools during manufacturing, dense-packed molecules solidify into a transparent armor that gives Gorilla Glass its extraordinary properties.”
Read the whole story here.
Researchers at CWRU are pioneers in the area of self-healing materials. View the video below:
CLICK on the image above to view a video about how Big Data and Technology is affecting all of our lives. This video was made by the BBC News Techology division, in a story titled: