Browse Physics

An analysis of the citation network leads to an alternative way to quantitatively assess the impact of a scientist’s work.

A different way of modeling networks allows an exact derivation of their properties.

Can physicists still learn anything about molecular motion from the classical pendulum?

A comparison between two social groups—urban gangs and the virtual “guilds” found in online role-playing games—suggests that they tend to follow similar patterns in how they form.

Misconceptions about “force” and “motion” are often rooted in everyday experiences. Understanding this link may help teachers better communicate with physics students.

The development of an accurate density functional method that scales linearly with system size will enable the study of large ensembles of atoms.

Images of the craters that form in underwater sand piles as air is forced to flow from beneath lead to a quantitative model of granular flow.

How the structural organization of a network evolves as it is observed on larger and larger scales remains an open question. Now, a general and systematic approach to answer this question may be in sight.

Calculus, group theory, and other mathematical tools are indispensable for understanding physics. Now the tables may be turned in a new approach toward solving a long-standing problem in mathematics.

Given that vaccine supplies are often limited, a quantitative understanding of how the number and frequency of vaccinations can affect the growth rate of disease would be useful. Physicists show that even a small number of randomly vaccinated individuals can exponentially increase the extinction rate of a disease.

Acoustic vortices that interact in a nonlinear medium may be one route to a new kind of robust arithmetic computation.