Browse Physics

Internal stress in a glass material is an important source of strength. Theory and experiments provide a new molecular-scale understanding of the process by which such stress develops.

Removing the charged layer around a particle allows detailed measurements of its motion in an electric field.

When rapidly deformed, a suspension of cornstarch in water not only becomes stiff like a solid but also fractures like one.

The use of optical tweezers in a high-pressure experiment allows a more direct measurement of water viscosity in extreme conditions.

A solid’s surface tension is usually difficult to separate from its bulk elasticity, but a new technique determines this property by measuring the contact angle of small droplets on a soft surface.

Defining a “temperature” for granular materials would allow them to be described with an equation of state.

An equation that describes a wide array of phenomena can be directly tested by watching the equivalent of a drying coffee drip.

Experiments show how the ripples in corrugated dirt roads can form and grow.

Previously observed convection in granular materials is now shown to be driven in part by the force of gravity, according to new microgravity experiments.

A projectile striking granular material generates a series of acoustic pulses that propagate down from the impact site.

Charged beads floating in a plasma spontaneously form a two-dimensional liquid consisting of small, ordered regions that slide past one another and may mimic the motions in real liquids.

A new model of DNA is able to reproduce the observed features of self-organizing nanostructures in DNA origami.

Two-dimensional simulations provide the first element-by-element accounting of the fluid and grain flow in an underwater avalanche.

The atomic force microscope, introduced in 1986, provided atomic-scale pictures of surfaces, with few limitations on the type of sample.

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

Though often treated similarly, glass and jamming transitions are qualitatively different.

A phenomenon called capillary fracturing determines how fluids drain into tightly packed porous granular media.

A random laser formed from shaken grains can be partially manipulated by varying the amount of shaking, according to new experiments.