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 ...

(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 ...

Researchers have demonstrated that not only could patterns on liquid crystals be controlled at nanoscales, but the changes could be visible without microscopes. The work could potentially pave the way ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a technique for mapping deformation in metals that can recover destroyed serial numbers on metal objects such ...

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 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 ...