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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Crystals are more than just pretty faces. Many of the useful properties associated with metal alloys or polymer blends -- like strength, flexibility and clarity -- stem from a material's specific ...

British developer CystalMaker Software on Tuesday announced the release of CrystalDiffract 5.0, the newest version of its software “for visualizing and understanding x-ray and neutron powder ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...