Browse Physics

Experiments now quantitatively confirm the standard model of electrokinetics, in which electric fields drive the flow of electrolytes, potentially leading to better sensors and biomedical diagnostic devices.

Two groups have made progress in building laserlike devices that emit phonons rather than photons.

The popularity of various chess openings follows a power law distribution, but the exponent depends on the depth of the opening sequence.

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.

Small nonequilibrium systems behave quite unexpectedly when in contact with a thermal reservoir. However, all of them—from molecular machines to molecular magnets—are described by a single fluctuation theorem.

Stochastic resonance, in which a periodic signal applied to a nonlinear system can be amplified by adding noise, has been observed in a mechanical system and predicted to occur in a Bose-Einstein condensate.

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.

With an array of water-activated levers, researchers demonstrate the first mechanical medium where waves travel in only one direction.

Energetic particle jets created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions might create detectable shock waves as they travel through the quark-gluon plasma.

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.

A disk of living tissue forms surprising shapes if its circumference grows faster than its diameter, according to a mathematical analysis.

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.

The rotational flow of fluid in a heated tank containing some heavy beads periodically reverses direction, mimicking some aspects of the motion of Earth’s continents over geologic time.