Researchers have used fishing line fiber and sewing thread to create inexpensive artificial muscles.  The inexpensive, artificial muscles generate far more force and power than human or animal…

Goodbye Ohm - Hello Heisenberg Research reported earlier this month shows that electrical resistance in nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene changes in discrete steps following quantum mechanical…

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene – the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon - could lead to much…

Peregrine falcons are one of the world's fastest birds, reaching up to 200 miles per hour when diving. Scientists are studying the body shape and wing contour of the bird to better understand how…

Stampedes occur often, and not just in wild animal herds. Previously, physicists developed numerous models of crowd evacuation dynamics based on disasters such as the yearly Muslim Hajj or of the…

You learned in high school that light has a dual nature - it exists as both waves and photons. It is this duality of light that enables the coherent transport of photons in lasers.  Physicists…

This build is a simplified Leeuwenhoek microscope made from CD-ROM drive parts and construction toys. My initial design was simply a rectangle of corrugated cardboard with a hole punched in it and…

Heat engines transform heat into mechanical energy with the corresponding efficiency of an Otto engine amounting to only about 25 percent, which is what your automobile gets. The efficiency of heat…

When E. F. Thompson stood on the deck of a ship cruise ship the Indian Ocean in the 1930s and observed a dolphin speed past the vessel in 7 seconds, he had no idea that this single observation would…

What would make snakes scarier? For spiders, the answer is easy. If you see one big enough to be feasting on Orc flesh in the caves under Mt. Doom, run, but snakes are tougher to make scary because…