Browse Physics

The interfaces between a mixture of two liquids act as support structures for making a colloidal gel.

The textbook rule that friction increases the more you press an object onto a surface doesn’t always hold for liquid drops.

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.


Detailed images of surface waves on the membrane of a living cell support a theory that the protein machinery involved in the cell’s locomotion are responsible for the waves.

Below a critical thickness, liquid-crystal films will exhibit molecular ordering similar to that of spins in a helical magnet.

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

Chains of spheres representing polymers can arrange themselves into a crystal, which turns out to be the highest entropy structure, according to computer simulations.

The rapid evaporation of solvent during spin casting—a technique widely used in the manufacture of plastic parts—may prevent polymer films from reaching equilibrium.

Scaling laws are a useful way to characterize fluid flow over a wide range of flow rates and experimental conditions. Theorists now explain several earlier experiments by finding a scaling law that describes how a liquid-liquid interface changes shape when driven by viscous forces.

A new theory explains why large polymer molecules sometimes migrate toward the coldest regions of a fluid, while the smallest ones move toward the hottest.

Gold wire networks made with a simple tabletop method may provide an alternative to more expensive transparent conductors.

High-intensity x-ray measurements show how suspended particles in a narrow channel are attracted to—or repelled from—the channel walls depending on the ionic concentration of the suspension. These results could have implications for the design of nanofluidic devices.

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.

A pair of colliding water droplets merges on the rebound, rather than when they’re squeezing against each other. The results should improve understanding of the separation process of oil-water mixtures important in industry.

Experiments with tiny beads mimicking atoms shed light on the mysterious atomic-scale rearrangements that occur when molten glass solidifies.

Nanoscale air bubbles in water appear to withstand huge swings in pressure, further deepening the mystery as to why they can exist in the first place.

Quasicrystals–orderly but not-quite-crystalline structures–have mostly appeared in solids, but researchers have now made a larger-scale version with polymers.

A micro-art technique offers the possibility of improved construction of microstructures.

A new theory explains the formation of interlaced zipper-like patterns that appear when thin ice sheets collide.

The ‘crystallization’ of shaken sand-like grains matches the process in computer simulations of idealized molecules, implying that the physics of gases and fluids may apply to granular materials.