The discovery of a crystal whose atoms are packed in a pattern that never repeats has won Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The structures in quasicrystals, as they ...

For scientists and engineers, the best way to understand a new or unknown material--whether it's an alloy, a pharmaceutical or a meteorite--is to delve into its atoms. Techniques such as X-ray ...

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...

Because liquid crystals are similar to oil, the surfactants were attracted to the liquid crystal shells, causing the molecules to order in different ways and create striking patterns. The more soap ...

Andrew Iams saw something strange while looking through his electron microscope. He was examining a sliver of a new aluminum alloy at the atomic scale, searching for the key to its strength, when he ...

Crystals are nature's most orderly substances. Inside them, atoms and molecules are arranged in regular, repeating structures, giving rise to solids that are stable and rigid—and often beautiful to ...

(Nanowerk News) When Lisa Tran set out to investigate patterns in liquid crystals, she didn't know what to expect. When she first looked through the microscope, she saw dancing iridescent spheres with ...