When most people think about milk, they picture breakfast cereal or a cappuccino. But beneath its creamy surface lies a complex colloidal system — and one of its star players is casein, a protein family with remarkable structural and functional properties. From nanoparticle engineering to biodegradable plastics, casein has been quietly shaping both our food and materials industries for over a century.
(more…)Synthetic rubies have fascinated scientists and jewelers alike for over a century. While natural rubies form deep within the Earth under immense heat and pressure, synthetic methods allow for the controlled creation of rubies with specific properties and flawless clarity. One of the most historically important and widely used techniques for producing synthetic rubies is flame fusion, also known as the Verneuil process.
Last week, we covered solar and thermoelectric energy generation. This week, we’ll cover geothermal and hydroelectric power.
As climate change accelerates and fossil fuels continue to pollute our atmosphere, the world is racing toward cleaner, more sustainable energy solutions. But what often goes unnoticed behind the scenes are the materials— the alloys, nanotechnology, polymers, and crystals that make renewable energy possible. Over the next two weeks, we’ll compare four powerful energy solutions: solar, thermoelectric, geothermal, and hydroelectric; and explore how materials science drives innovation in each. Today, we will discuss solar and thermoelectric energy generation.
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Whether you’re sprinting 100 meters or pacing a 5K, the track itself is working with your body. Let’s dig into what makes a good track, and how materials science makes it possible.
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So how do these shoes work their magic? Let’s break the three components: cushioning, the carbon plate, and shoe shape.
(more…)Last week, we discussed crystalline structure classifications and the discovery of X-rays and their use in crystallography.
Bragg’s Law and X-ray Diffraction
Imagine you have a laser pointer in a room of spherical mirrors and black walls. Depending on where you point the laser pointer, it will hit the wall in a different position. Knowing the angle you shine the laser pointer and where it lands, you can find the distance between two of the mirrors. Now, replace the mirrors with atoms and the laser with an X-ray, and you have a setup to find the distance between each atom. The formula used to find that distance is called Bragg’s law.
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Last week, we talked about Kepler’s observations on the lattice structure of snowflakes, Steno’s law, and Rene Just Huay’s fundamental unit hypothesis.
Crystal Classification
In 1830, a few decades after Huay’s fundamental unit hypothesis, Johann F. C. Hessel used geometry to derive the possible unit structures of crystals. He knew that crystals could only have certain types of rotation, two-fold, three-fold, four-fold, and six-fold. That means, starting from the center of the unit, drawing lines that split the crystal into two, three, four, or six equal sections. Think of it like a circle; starting from the center, the number of lines to the edge of the circle you draw while making sectors of the same shape is the number of rotational symmetry. Because lattices have a limited number of rotational axes, even without a microscope, Hessel was able to describe all possible fundamental unit symmetries. Auguste Bravais described many of these symmetries more specifically as types of lattice structures.
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What is Crystallography?
In order to understand the history of it, we have to know what crystallography is. Crystallography is the study of crystals and the use of their atomic arrangement to understand their properties. Crystallography can be very useful. For example, it was used to track mutations and find a cure for COVID-19 (NIH). The spikes of the virus that allowed it to attach and infect your cells had a crystalline structure, meaning antibody treatments could target those spikes. The crystal spikes would also change slightly during mutations, allowing scientists to track new strands of COVID. Crystalline structures are also responsible for gemstones’ brilliance in light.
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