Materials Science — Posts

94 posts on "Materials Science" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• Beyond Food: How Soybeans Power Jet Engines and Plastics — Beyond agriculture, soybeans possess unique biological properties driving innovations in jet fuel, winter tires, and safer plastics.
• The Technologies Turning Carbon Into a Profitable Industry — New technologies are turning carbon capture from a costly necessity into a profitable industry by using emissions to create resources like concrete.
• Earthquake Lights, Mie Scattering and Venezuela's Red Sky — While dust caused Venezuela's red skies via Mie scattering, true earthquake lights stem from tectonic pressure and may help predict future tremors.
• Supercritical fluids and the future of geothermal energy — Advanced electromagnetic drilling aims to reach deep supercritical fluids, potentially providing limitless geothermal energy for the AI revolution.
• Why rocket explosions on the launch pad keep happening — From cryogenic fuel physics to the New Glenn explosion, this piece explains the chain of failure modes that make every successful launch an engineering…
• Liquid metal circuit boards could slash electronics prototyping time — Itera's liquid metal technology instantly reconfigures circuit boards, drastically reducing prototyping time while protecting intellectual property.
• Corning's evolution from Edison's lightbulb to AI optical fibers — Corning has sustained 175 years of relevance by adapting its glass technology for everything from Edison's lightbulbs to modern AI data centers.
• Walmart proves 3D-printed construction is commercially viable — Walmart's new 3D-printed warehouses prove that robotic concrete printing is now a faster, cost-effective alternative to traditional construction.
• The Geopolitical Battle Over LED Manufacturing — The transition to gallium nitride in LED manufacturing has sparked a geopolitical struggle due to its critical military and communication applications.
• How a Rare Helium Isotope Cools Quantum Computers — Helium-3, a rare isotope sourced from nuclear warheads and the Moon, is essential for cooling quantum computers to near absolute zero.
• The Science Behind Why a $4,000 Audio Cable Sounds Like a $7 One — Tests reveal that expensive RCA cables offer no audio improvement over cheap ones, a phenomenon explained by simple physics and confirmation bias.
• The Challenges and Strategic Value of a Far Side Moon Base — Despite communication and terrain challenges, the Moon's far side offers vital resources like ice and helium-3, sparking a new geopolitical race.
• Antimatter transported for the first time in human history — A look at how CERN researchers transported antimatter in a purpose-built container, the physics behind its staggering cost, and its potential use in…
• The engineering behind the B-2 bomber's stealth and endurance — From its radar-absorbing iron-powder coating to a laser that detects contrail formation, this post breaks down the stealth and aerodynamic engineering of…
• MIRV missiles: the Cold War technology now launching commercial — A clear breakdown of how MIRV warheads actually work, why Iran's cluster munitions fall far short, and what links them to SpaceX's multi-satellite…
• How Tesla solved the battery and heat problems that held back — From cylindrical cells with interleaved cooling tubes to a structural battery floor, a look at the engineering breakthroughs behind Tesla's thermal and…
• The engineering inside Tesla's motors that most drivers never think — Dual motors, carbon-fiber sleeves, and silicon carbide inverters — a clear look at the engineering solutions Tesla built into its electric drivetrains.
• Natural gas feeds the world — here is how it travels to do so — From fertilizer production to cryogenic tankers sailing at -161°C, this piece explains why natural gas underpins global food supply and modern industry.
• Hormuz Island: red ochre, ancient salt, and a strait that shapes — The vivid red shores of Iran's Hormuz Island owe their color to iron oxide used locally as spice and pigment — and the island's strategic past echoes in…
• Why old HDD drives are suddenly back in high demand — EU AI data-retention rules, rising SSD costs, and new laser and microwave writing technologies are driving an unexpected HDD revival with capacities up to
• A QR code smaller than a bacterium just broke a world record — Researchers from TU Wien and startup Cerabyte etched a 1.98 sq-micron QR code onto ceramic, demonstrating a storage method that could hold 2TB per A4…
• The physics behind launching and stopping jets on a carrier — From electromagnetic catapults powered by flywheels to glycol-cooled arresting gear, a clear breakdown of the advanced systems aboard the USS Gerald R.…
• Intel's ZAM memory aims to pack 512 GB where HBM tops out at 64 — Intel and SoftBank's ZAM technology uses diagonal drilling between memory layers to promise 512 GB per package — eight times the capacity of today's best…
• Iron Beam: the engineering behind Israel's high-power laser defense — From ytterbium fiber bundles to real-time atmospheric correction, a clear-eyed look at how Iron Beam combines dozens of lasers into a single 100-kilowatt…
• Tower Semiconductor and Nvidia bet on silicon photonics for AI — A new deal between Tower Semiconductor and Nvidia will bring silicon-nitride optical interconnects inside AI servers, promising up to 70% energy savings…
• How a Japanese toilet maker became a key supplier to the chip — Toto's mastery of ceramic shrinkage, developed for luxury toilets, led to an electrostatic wafer-holding technology now in high demand as AI chip…
• The glass fabric holding the chip industry together — and Intel's — Why boron-free T-Glass became a critical bottleneck for AI chip production, and how Intel is developing a pure glass substrate as a future alternative.
• Sugar cane: from white sugar to jet fuel and nano-cellulose — The world's highest-yield crop produces far more than table sugar — its byproducts include bioplastics, sustainable aviation fuel, Lego pieces, and…
• Why Chinese waste-to-energy plants are hungry for Western trash — China built over 1,000 waste-to-energy plants, but moisture-heavy local garbage drops furnace temperatures into the dioxin-forming range — making dry…
• Molten salt and the eutectic point powering next-generation solar — A Chinese concentrating solar plant using 30,000 heliostats and a eutectic molten-salt mixture can store thermal energy for up to six hours, outperforming
• The physics of bungee cords, and why summer jumps feel better — From vulcanized natural rubber to the Gough-Joule effect, this piece explains the material science that makes a modern bungee cord safe — and why cold…
• Breaking a CPU overclocking record with liquid helium — From quartz oscillators to liquid-helium cooling at near absolute zero, this post explains the physics behind pushing a CPU past 9 GHz to set a world…
• Germanium: the element inside your phone, missiles, and quantum — A look at germanium's unique optical and electronic properties, its role in 5G, thermal imaging, and missiles, and the chalcogenide glass competing to…
• Gallium: the metal that melts in your hand and corrodes aircraft — A concise look at gallium's unusual properties, its role in power electronics and military radar, the complexity of refining it, and why China's dominance
• The $400 million machine at the heart of modern chip manufacturing — A look at how ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machine works, and the startup betting X-rays can do the job better and cheaper.
• China's underwater data center runs on wind and seawater cooling — China completed the first phase of a subsea data center that uses ocean water for passive cooling and nearby wind turbines as its sole power source.
• Lab-grown diamonds are becoming a critical component in chips and — Lab-grown diamonds, which conduct heat five times better than copper, may soon enable faster chips and room-temperature quantum computing qubits.
• Sodium batteries: a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium — Sodium-ion batteries offer lower cost, improved safety, and better cold-weather performance than lithium, though their lower energy density currently…
• Extremophiles: life forms that thrive where others cannot survive — From cold-adapted enzymes in laundry detergents to heat-loving microbes in a Gobi Desert hot spring, this piece explores how extremophiles work and why…
• Iodine: from table salt to spacecraft propellant — A weekly science digest covering iodine's role in the body, its energetic reaction with titanium, and its potential as a spacecraft propellant.
• How a fusion reactor could turn mercury into gold — A US startup claims that bombarding mercury-198 with neutrons inside a fusion reactor can produce gold as a byproduct — here is the science and the…
• Laminar flow and the Reynolds number: the physics behind a tap that — A look at laminar versus turbulent flow, the dimensionless Reynolds number that marks the boundary between them, and why it matters in pipelines, blood…
• Ammonium nitrate: why the same compound fertilizes crops and levels — A concise chemical explanation of why ammonium nitrate is both a highly effective fertilizer and the powerful explosive behind disasters like the 2020…
• From mining waste to battery materials: olivine's unlikely second — A New Zealand startup has developed a process to extract magnesium, silicate, and battery-grade NMC from olivine powder — an industrial waste product — in
• Why a glowing copper ball barely scorches a coconut shell — Lignin in the coconut shell undergoes endothermic pyrolysis, absorbing heat and forming an insulating char layer — a property that also makes lignin…
• Carbon: the element that makes life possible and threatens it — From DNA to fossil fuels and carbon monoxide poisoning, a concise look at the chemistry that makes carbon both essential to life and a source of serious…
• ASUS's gold-plated GPU pushes luxury PC hardware to a new extreme — ASUS's ROG Astral Dhahab line, sold exclusively in the Middle East, is set to get a 5 kg solid 24K gold variant worth over half a million dollars, paired…
• The world's smallest artificial heart saved a toddler's life — An 11-gram titanium artificial heart implanted in a 16-month-old in 2012 kept him alive for 13 days, and the continuous-flow technology behind its…
• Why your jeans are yellow before they turn blue — the chemistry of — A concise look at indigo's history and chemistry — from death penalties for smuggling it to a Nobel-winning synthesis and the redox reaction behind every…
• Solid fuel and staging: the physics behind Iran's Sajjil ballistic — A clear explanation of solid-fuel propulsion, multi-stage rocket design, and the extreme engineering challenges that the Sajjil missile's unusual contrail
• The physics of glass: why it shatters and how it is made stronger — From borosilicate to tempered glass, the post explains the physical mechanisms behind heat resistance and impact strength in different types of glass.
• Why ice crystals in cirrus clouds create rings of light around the — A clear explanation of how hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus clouds refract sunlight at precise angles to produce single or double halos around the sun.
• The ring-wing aircraft and the physics of wingless edges — Wingtip vortices waste up to 40% of an aircraft's energy, and Lockheed's ring-wing concept offers a structural solution rooted in basic physics.
• The 660-ton pendulum keeping Taipei 101 standing — The 660-ton steel sphere suspended inside Taipei 101 uses inertia and energy conservation to counteract earthquakes and typhoons — the same damping…
• Aluminium is the most recyclable material humans use — From Napoleon's dinner table to modern recycling plants, aluminium's near-perfect recyclability and staggering energy savings make it unlike any other…
• How levitation works — and why it matters for climate and quantum — From Meissner-effect superconductors to optical tweezers and the Casimir force, this piece explains how levitation works and what room-temperature…
• Soap bubbles, surface tension and Plateau's laws: the physics of — From the Laplace equation to Plateau's 120-degree rule, this post explains how surface tension and energy minimization shape soap bubbles, honeycombs, and
• The physics of suspension bridges: resonance, triangles, and spider — A look at the structural principles behind suspension bridges — cable geometry, resonance failure, and the triangulation shared by bike frames and bird…
• The neutrino that nearly broke the speed of light barrier — From a $100-million underground detector in Japan to a loose cable that sent physics into a panic, this piece traces the neutrino's strangest moments.
• A controlled nuclear blast to reverse decades of carbon emissions — A proposed geoengineering plan would use an 81-gigaton nuclear detonation to pulverize basalt rock, absorbing 30 years' worth of global carbon emissions…
• Cesium: the metal behind atomic clocks and nuclear fallout — From defining the international second to persisting in post-nuclear fallout, this post examines the remarkable atomic properties that make cesium both…
• A robotic hand grown from living tendons reaches 18 cm — Researchers at the University of Tokyo embedded lab-grown tendon tissue into a 3D-printed hand that can grip objects, control individual fingers, and…
• Why electronic solder is exactly 63% tin and 37% lead — The specific tin-lead ratio in solder is no accident — it forms a eutectic mixture that lowers the melting point to 183°C, protecting circuit boards…
• The structural secret that makes teeth nearly unbreakable — Tooth enamel's hexagonal hydroxyapatite rods and flexible amelogenin protein combine to withstand hundreds of kilograms of pressure while resisting sudden
• Lab-grown heart tissue beats like the real thing — Using pluripotent stem cells, scientists grow beating cardiac tissue in the lab — a breakthrough for drug testing, even as a full artificial heart remains
• Why ping-pong balls explode out of a container when doused with — Liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C vaporizes on contact with ping-pong balls and expands 700-fold in volume, launching the balls in every direction.
• How water at 60,000 PSI cuts through steel like butter — Using Pascal's and Bernoulli's laws together, a thin water jet reaches 2.5 times the speed of sound — enough to slice through steel with remarkable…
• Neodymium: the element behind color-shifting glass and electric — The electron structure of neodymium causes glass to shift color under different light sources — and the same element puts over a kilogram of rare-earth…
• Fool's gold and its surprising potential in clean energy — Pyrite, long dismissed as fool's gold, is a natural semiconductor that researchers are investigating for use in solar cells and high-capacity lithium…
• The physics behind fireworks colors — From metal salt combustion to electron energy transitions, this post explains how fireworks get their colors, shapes, and precise timing.
• Supercooled water and the physics of instant freezing — A clear explanation of supercooling — why pure water stays liquid below 0°C, how a gentle squeeze triggers chain-reaction freezing, and the link to…
• Melting metal without touching it: induction heating explained — A changing magnetic field from an AC coil levitates a metal piece and heats it from within via eddy currents until it melts — the same principle behind…
• Google's new California office is built from wood, and the carbon — Google's new timber office building emits 96% less carbon than a concrete-and-steel equivalent, raising questions about sustainable construction and its…
• Sodium polyacrylate: the polymer that absorbs 800 times its volume in — A clear breakdown of how sodium polyacrylate's ionic polymer chains attract water molecules, why salt reduces that capacity, and the role osmosis plays in
• The Rehbinder Effect: how water makes glass resist shattering — Discovered in 1928, the Rehbinder effect explains how surface-active substances weaken intermolecular bonds in solids, making materials like glass…
• How pure oxygen can make a diamond vanish — When a diamond is heated to extreme temperatures and exposed to pure oxygen, every carbon atom oxidizes into CO₂, dissolving the hardest natural material…
• BYD's YangWang U9 hits 392 km/h and challenges the EV speed record — The Chinese-built YangWang U9 supercar packs 1,306 hp across four motors and tops out near 392 km/h, placing it just behind the Rimac Nevera as the…
• Why titanium screws change color: the physics of electrochemical — A titanium dioxide layer formed by electrochemical redox produces a spectrum of colors through light interference, not changes in chemical composition.
• The physics of what happens when lightning strikes a tree — A lightning bolt carrying billions of watts superheats water inside a tree until it explodes, and the post explains how lightning forms and travels from…
• Vantablack: the material that absorbs 99.965% of visible light — A concise look at how carbon nanotubes make Vantablack so extraordinarily dark, its uses in telescopes and space, and the art-world controversy it sparked.
• Prada designed NASA's next moonwalking spacesuit — Italian fashion house Prada partnered with Axiom Space to design the spacesuit NASA astronauts will wear on the Artemis lunar mission in 2026.
• Why batteries explode under pressure — A step-by-step look at battery anatomy and the chain reaction that turns physical pressure into fire and heat.
• Why a flame conducts electricity: fire as plasma — A flame placed between charged metal plates acts as an electrical conductor because fire is a plasma full of free electrons and positive ions.
• A handbag made of 99% air: NASA's aerogel enters the fashion world — Parisian fashion house Coperni unveiled a 33-gram handbag made from silica aerogel, the world's lightest solid material, originally developed by NASA for…
• Van de Graaff generator: how a spinning belt builds millions of volts — A clear breakdown of how a Van de Graaff generator accumulates extreme voltage, and why high voltage alone does not determine the danger of electric shock.
• Dendritic agate and the fractal geometry hiding in minerals — Dendritic agate is a manganese and iron oxide crystal whose repeating fractal growth process produces plant-like patterns resembling both snowflakes and…
• Prince Rupert's Drops: the physics of a nearly indestructible head — The internal stress locked inside Prince Rupert's Drops explains both their remarkable resistance to crushing and their explosive fragmentation when the…
• Why modern recording studios use glass walls instead of foam panels — Double-pane vacuum glass and angled inner panels deliver effective acoustic isolation in small studios while preventing claustrophobia and preserving…
• The Meissner effect: how superconductors make magnets levitate — Superconductors eliminate electrical resistance and expel magnetic fields entirely, a phenomenon Walter Meissner described in 1933 that causes magnets to…
• How a tiny quartz crystal keeps your watch accurate — From piezoelectricity to the Mohs scale, this piece explains the engineering behind the 32,768 Hz quartz crystal at the heart of every modern watch.
• What happens when magnesium meets microwave radiation — A piece of magnesium in a quartz cup turns into glowing plasma inside a microwave — here is the physics behind the blue sparks.
• Solid-state batteries and why they matter more than you think — Solid-state batteries promise faster charging, greater safety, and longer lifespan — and a Chinese company claims to have already shipped them in budget…
• Mighty Buildings prints modular homes in 3D and ships them to your — Mighty Buildings uses giant 3D printers to produce modular home components that a four-person crew can assemble in four days, claiming five times the…
• Shape memory alloys: how metal remembers its original form — Alloys like nickel-titanium switch between austenite and martensite phases, allowing them to recover their original shape when heated.