Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Borides are hard, heat-resistant materials, often used for coating structures that will have to withstand high temperatures and high-pressure environments. But even the best borides are susceptible to oxidation — the chemical reaction that causes corrosion and rusting.

Borides are among the hardest and most heat-resistant substances on the planet, but their Achilles’ Heel, like so many materials’, is that they oxidize at high temperatures. Oxidation is the chemical reaction commonly known as corrosion or rusting — it can signal the end for a material’s structural integrity...

(Colour online) Pre- and post-video test scores by age group (Study A). Values shown are means ± standard errors. All pre-test to post-test improvements were statistically significant (paired t-tests, p < .001 for each)

Does “edutainment” such as content-rich music videos have any place in the rapidly changing landscape of science education? A new study indicates that students can indeed learn serious science content from such videos. The study, titled ‘Leveraging the power of music to improve science education’ and published by International Journal of Science Education, examined over 1,000 students in a 3-part experiment, comparing learners’ understanding and engagement in response to 24 musical and non-musical science videos.

The central findings were that
(1) across ages and g...

Research by Cho and Yongping Zheng (pictured) focuses on the electrolyte catalysts inside the battery, which, when combined with oxygen, create chemical reactions that create battery capacity. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Kyeongjae Cho, professor of materials science and engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, has discovered new catalyst materials for lithium-air batteries that jumpstart efforts at expanding battery capacity. Lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) batteries “breathe” oxygen from the air to power the chemical reactions that release electricity, rather than storing an oxidizer internally like lithium-ion batteries do...

Glued to the spot: Max Planck scientists from Stuttgart have used gallium as an adhesive to grip a glass sphere with a movable punch model. The metal is located at the bottom of the punch model. Once it touches the glass sphere, the researchers heat the gallium and then cool it off again, so that it connects to the glass. This way, they can retract the sphere from the surface. Credit: © MPI for Intelligent Systems

Researchers are suggesting gallium as just such a reversible adhesive. By inducing slight changes in temperature, they can control whether a layer of gallium sticks or not. This is based on the fact that gallium transitions from a solid state to a liquid state at ~30C...