Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
- Chemistry
Reusable plastic bottles release hundreds of pollutants into water
Data show the plastic ends up tainting drinking water. For now, scientists don’t know what health risks downing these pollutants might pose.
- Health & Medicine
Patches and robotic pills may one day replace injections
Instead of a shot in the arm, a light-activated patch or robotic pill may one day deliver your medicine.
- Plants
Electric shocks act like vaccines to protect plants from viruses
To protect crops against viruses in their home country of Taiwan, two teens invented a novel approach to fight blights.
- Chemistry
Let’s learn about cellulose
The world’s most abundant natural polymer is finding all kinds of new uses, in everything from ice cream to construction.
- Space
Explainer: All about orbits
A handful of rules can describe the route some object repeatedly takes around another in space. Calculating that path, however, can be quite complex.
- Materials Science
This new fabric can ‘hear’ sounds or broadcast them
With special fibers that convert tiny vibrations to voltages, a new fabric senses sound. Someday, such fabrics could monitor the body or aid hearing.
- Materials Science
Let’s learn about the future of smart clothing
Researchers are fashioning new materials to make clothes more comfortable and convenient.
- Physics
Explainer: The fundamental forces
Four fundamental forces control all interactions between matter, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest structures in the universe.
- Materials Science
Engineers borrow a tree’s cellulose to toughen new materials
Cellulose gives plants their strength. Engineers are turning this renewable, environmentally friendly resource into brand new materials.
- Tech
Robots made of cells blur the line between creature and machine
Scientists are using living cells and tissue as building blocks to make robots. These new machines challenge ideas about robots and life itself.
- Tech
A new device uses atoms’ quantum weirdness to peer underground
Quantum sensors like this one could monitor magma beneath volcanoes or uncover archaeological artifacts.
- Materials Science
A disinfectant made from sawdust knocks out deadly microbes
It’s made by pressure-cooking sawdust and water, is cheap and easy to make — and could lead to greener cleaning products than chemicals used today.
