Category Physics

Dark brown fallow deer (buck) with big antlers is shown. Credit: Wikipedia commons

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered the secret behind the toughness of deer antlers and how they can resist breaking during fights. The team looked at the antler structure at the nano-level and were able to identify the mechanisms at work, using state-of-the-art computer modelling and xray techniques.

Paolino De Falco from QMUL’s School of Engineering and Materials Science said: “The fibrils that make up the antler are staggered rather than in line with each other. This allows them to absorb the energy from the impact of a clash during a fight...

This diagram shows the setup for an imaging method that mapped electrical signals using a sheet of graphene and an infrared laser. The laser was fired through a prism (lower left) onto a sheet of graphene. An electrode was used to send tiny electrical signals into a liquid solution (in cylinder atop the graphene), and a camera (lower right) was used to capture images mapping out these electrical signals. (Credit: Halleh Balch and Jason Horng/Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley)

Team creates a system to visualize faint electric fields. Scientists have enlisted the exotic properties of graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of carbon, to function like the film of an incredibly sensitive camera system in visually mapping tiny electric fields in a liquid...

New MIT research could offer a way of making tiny movable parts with no solid connections between the pieces, potentially eliminating a major source of wear and failure in microelectromechanical machines. The new system uses a layer of liquid droplets to support a tiny, movable platform. Credit: Daniel Preston/Device Research Lab

A platform floating on tiny droplets, using hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces, could provide precise motion control for optical devices, MEMS and other systems. Microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, are tiny machines fabricated using equipment and processes developed for the production of electronic chips and devices...

This tiny radio — whose building blocks are the size of two atoms — can withstand extremely harsh environments and is biocompatible, meaning it could work anywhere from a probe on Venus to a pacemaker in a human heart. Credit: Eliza Grinnell/Harvard SEAS

Harvard engineers have made the world’s smallest radio receiver – built out of an assembly of atomic-scale defects in pink diamonds. This tiny radio—whose building blocks are the size of two atoms—can withstand extremely harsh environments and is biocompatible, meaning it could work anywhere from a probe on Venus to a pacemaker in a human heart. The research was led by Marko Loncar, Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at SEAS, and his graduate student Linbo Shao.

This tiny radio — whose building blocks are the size of two ...