Category Physics

A high-speed camera captured this image of an elastic sphere bouncing off the water surface in a tank. Credit: Chris Mabey

Skipping stones across the water surface can be tricky. So why is it so easy to get such impressive water-skipping performance from an elastic ball? Researchers say they have answers that may reveal a lot about water impact physics – important in naval applications and maritime and ocean engineering.

In collaboration the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in R.I., and Brown University, Assistant Prof Tadd Truscott’s team at USU’s Splash Lab have unraveled the physics of how elastic spheres bounce on water more easily than rigid ones. They uses high-speed cameras to capture images of elastic spheres bouncing across tanks of water in a laboratory...

MIT researchers have designed a new chip to implement neural networks. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing. Credit: MIT News

Advance could enable mobile devices to implement ‘neural networks’ modeled on the human brain. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing.

Neural networks are typically implemented using graphics processing units (GPUs), special-purpose graphics chips found in all computing devices with screens...

The researchers from the Faculty of Physics of the Moscow State University have grown organic crystals that allow creating flexible electronic devices. Credit: Dmitry Yu. Paraschuk et al.

Scientists from Faculty of Physics Moscow State University have grown organic semiconductor crystals which can reduce the cost of the process of creating light, flexible and transparent light-emitting electronic devices of the new generation. It has high light-emitting efficiency that promise a bright future for wet-processed organic optoelectronics. They also made a double breakthrough using much simpler and cheaper technologies that previously were considered impractical.

The organic optoelectronics is a rapidly growing area including organic light-emitting transistors (OLET) and organic lasers pumped b...

The smallest lattice in the world is visible under the microscope only. Struts and braces are 0.2 µm in diameter. Total size of the lattice is about 10 µm. Credit: J. Bauer / KIT

Scientists have now presented the smallest human-made lattice structure. 3D lattice with glassy carbon struts and braces of <200 nm in diameter has higher specific strength than most solids. They are smaller than comparable metamaterials by a factor of five. Apps may include electrodes, filters or optical components.

“Lightweight construction materials, such as bones and wood, are found everywhere in nature,” said Dr.-Ing. Jens Bauer of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)...