Head Blaze

Microelectromechanical devices gave us the Wii and the digital movie projector. MIT researchers have found a new way to make them.
Microelectromechanical devices — tiny machines with moving parts — are everywhere these days: they monitor air pressure in car tires, register the gestures of video game players, and reflect light onto screens in movie theaters. But they’re manufactured the same way computer chips are, in facilities that can cost billions of dollars, and their rigidity makes them hard to wrap around curved surfaces. Continue Reading »

UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have obtained the first glimpse of miniscule air bubbles that keep water from wetting a super non-stick surface. Detailed information about the size and shape of these bubbles — and the non-stick material the scientists created by “pock-marking” a smooth material with cavities measuring mere billionths of a meter — is being published online today in the journal Nano Letters. Continue Reading »

We like to think that we’ve got hydrogen, one of the most basic of elements, figured out. However, hydrogen can still surprise, especially once scientists start probing its properties on the most fundamental levels. “We ran simulations in order to provide a quantitative map of the molecular to atomic transition in liquid hydrogen,” Isaac Tamblyn tells PhysOrg.com. “Some of what we found was surprising, and could change the basic equations of state used in models involving hydrogen.” Continue Reading »

Issam Mudawar a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, and doctoral student Milan Visaria display their first- and second-generation heat exchangers, a crucial component of a hydrogen storage system for cars. The final design is a coil of stainless steel tubing that fits inside a hydrogen storage “pressure vessel” 4 inches in diameter. Purdue has filed a final patent on the heat exchanger. Continue Reading »