How Strain Changes Light
Light from thin semiconductor layers can be polarized: its waves oscillate in a single plane. Previously, it was thought that the direction of oscillation was set by how the sample was illuminated.
Heat Turns into Electricity Even in Ordinary Glass
Heat a nail in a fire, and it will lengthen — everyone knows that. But heat only the tip and leave the other end cold, and the nail doesn't just get longer: it bends, because hot metal expands more than cold metal. It's this very bending, but at the atomic level, that physicists have turned into electricity.