The use of plastics on a daily basis is inherent to modern life. The most produced and utilized family of plastics are polyolefins, which are used in packaging materials, toys, lawn chairs, and extremely strong fibers and ...
Chinese researchers recently demonstrated an innovative chemical method for engineering diverse layered hydrogels with wet and slippery features at room temperature.
Researchers have developed a jelly-like material that can withstand the equivalent of an elephant standing on it, and completely recover to its original shape, even though it's 80% water.
The ancient arts of origami, the art of paper-folding, and kirigami, the art of paper-cutting, have gained popularity in recent years among researchers building mechanical metamaterials. Folding and cutting 2D thin-film materials ...
A research group coordinated by Barbara Mazzolai at the IIT—Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) has created the first ever prototype of a soft, biodegradable and soluble velcro inspired by ...
The snapping of a finger was first depicted in ancient Greek art around 300 B.C. Today, that same snap initiates evil forces for the villain Thanos in Marvel's latest Avengers movie. Both media inspired a group of researchers ...
A pair of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an artificial material that emulates the way that plants use fluids to defy gravity. In their paper published in the CellPress journal Matter, ...
For some, the mere mention of liquid metal might conjure visions of T-1000: the shapeshifting, nigh-invincible villain that turns up the heat on humanity's future savior in "Terminator 2."
Blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) are distant relatives of rainworms, measuring up to 10 cm long. They live in shallow marshes, ponds, and swamps in Europe and North America, where they feed on microorganisms and debris. ...
Polymer science has made possible rubber tires, Teflon and Kevlar, plastic water bottles, nylon jackets among many other ubiquitous features of daily life. Elastic polymers, known as elastomers, can be stretched and released ...
