Water, though familiar, still hides astonishing secrets. When squeezed into nanosized channels, it can enter a bizarre “premelting state” that is both solid and liquid at once. Using advanced NMR ...

While the vapour–liquid–solid process has been widely used for growing one-dimensional nanostructures, quantitative understanding of the process is still far from adequate. For example, the origins ...

A team at the University of Colorado Boulder has designed new kinds of liquid crystals that mirror the complex structures of some solid crystals—a major step forward in building flowing materials that ...

Water may seem boring, but it's way weirder than it looks. Scientists in Japan have now shown that when confined to tight spaces, water molecules can behave like both a solid and a liquid ...

Materials scientists are looking to nature -- at the discs in human spines and the skin in ocean-diving fish, for example -- for clues about how to use liquid to increase the stiffness of flexible ...

Almost everything is made of particles. Particles can be atoms, molecules or ions. Particles behave differently in solids, liquids and gases. The particle model explains the differences between solids ...

Spider silk has long been hailed for its wondrous properties, such as incredible toughness. Now researchers have found a weird kind of webbing that acts as both a liquid and a solid. What’s more, they ...

Currently, small metal implants either have to be surgically removed from the body once they're no longer needed, or just left inside indefinitely – both of which can lead to complications. Now, ...

A trip to the seaside is always fun - even in winter! But it does get a bit nippy and we need to warm up. A mug of hot chocolate! That'll do the trick and it'll help us understand solutions. Solutions ...