Browse Physics

Molecules in a liquid crystal order into a pattern whose links and twists resemble a Hopf fibration, a geometric shape from topology with unusual properties.

Numerical simulations are revealing general properties of jammed states of matter.

A conceptual framework that describes the fluidlike flow of dry granular materials also works for particles suspended in a liquid.

AFM experiments suggest the long lifetime of surface nanobubbles is due to a balanced influx and outflux of gas molecules.

The dramatic speed-up of fluid flow in a drying drop of a colloidal suspension controls the pattern of order and disorder in the particle stain that is left behind.

Colloids containing ellipsoidal particles have two distinct glass transitions.

An x-ray free electron laser setup converts the diffraction pattern of randomly positioned and oriented particles into an image of a single particle.

A temperature effect could allow us to dynamically change the stochastic behavior of certain colloidal particles.

New experiments resolve differences in measuring the viscosity of liquids confined to thin films at the molecular level.

Directed percolation, a class of nonequilibrium phase transitions as prominent as the Ising model in equilibrium statistical mechanics, is realized experimentally for the first time, after more than fifty years of research.


Experiments on melting of small water clusters open the door to the study of the size-dependent phase diagram of water.

A shear force can melt a colloidal glass, causing it to flow in a highly nonlinear fashion. Physicists have now found a way to put the description of this type of flow on a more formal theoretical footing.