Friction Vanishes Before Your Eyes
Two pieces of graphite rub against each other, and the resistance vanishes as if an invisible film of oil separated them. Previously, this was only seen under a microscope, on tiny contact patches.
Bone-Chilling: A Cast That Cools Itself
The sun blazes, but the cast on your arm stays cool. The secret lies in a thin coating made from recycled animal bones.
Typical cooling surfaces are often rigid and brittle: you can't stick them onto a curved bandage. Here, they took a commercial fiberglass cast that hardens quickly and added two polymer layers. Inside are ceramic particles of calcium pyrophosphate derived from bone waste.
How to knit a molecular net without a single knot
Crocheting, but instead of yarn you have individual molecules, and instead of a hook, a gold surface. Until now, attempts to knit such molecules into a smooth fabric ended in a tangle: the threads hooked where they shouldn't, and the pattern went awry.
A team of scientists has found a way to fix this.