Quasicrystals
jhalper | December 10, 2012Is anyone old enough to remember the ad in which two people walking down the street while snacking accidently bump into each other and discover peanut butter on a chocolate bar? Well, it turns out that when physics students run into each other on the street, the result is a quasicrystal with topological properties.
The students in question were members of two different labs in two different physics departments who were both out for a stroll on the same street in Tel Aviv – far from Rehovot and the Weizmann Institute. One was experimenting with a new kind of quasicrystalline optical system –…
jhalper | December 12, 2011If you followed this year's chemistry Nobel, you know about the quasicrystal design on the ties made for Prof. Dan Schechtman's 70th birthday. Even the prime minister was seen sporting one last week. But did you know there is also a quasicrystal scarf?
While Prof. Schechtman was getting his white tie and tails ready for the formal ceremony, this scarf was on display in fashionable Tel Aviv around the shoulders of Prof. Gitti Frey, a nanoscientist at the Technion.
Despite the photo op, fashion took a back seat to science last Thursday evening. Frey was the guest speaker at a Science on Tap…
milhayser | November 21, 2011Recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prizes were announced the week of October 3. The winners in medicine were honored for their work in immunology, as reported on Tomorrow's Table. Steinman "discovered a new class of cell, known as dendritic cells, which are key activators of the adaptive immune system;" shockingly, he died a few days before the announcement. On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham questions the significance of Beutler's contribution, saying "the conceptual groundwork for its importance in the immune response had already been laid" by a researcher named Janeway. Kevin continues, "giving…
kcollins | November 7, 2011AT&T sponsored Nifty Fifty program speaker and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale University Ainissa Ramirez has created a new YouTube video series entitled Material Marvels from her lab at Yale on some pretty cool materials used in space, robots and even in your mouth! Her titles to date are Space Shuttle Tiles, Shape Memory Alloys, Solar Cells and Quasicrystals.
Here is the first in her series:
Ainissa Ramirez is perhaps best known for discovering a universal solder that can bond metals to ceramics, glass, diamonds and the oxide materials used…