Condensed concepts

 A characteristic of emergent phenomena is how novel and complex properties can emerge from apparently simple laws. Quantum ChromoDynamics (...

Every person is unique. No two people are identical. We differ in physical appearance, personality, fingerprints, heartbeat, gait, and DNA. ...

Adventures in Flatland In everyday life we think of most objects as having three dimensions. But what would life be like in a two-dimen...

  The order of things Life and the world around us sometimes appears chaotic and random. We may feel this way about traffic, weather, econom...

 Snowflakes form incredibly diverse structures, seen when they condense onto a plate of glass. Every snowflake is different. On the other ha...

Diamond and graphite are distinct solid states of carbon. They have qualitatively different physical properties, at both the microscopic and...

The relationship between emergence and causation is contentious, with a long history. Most discussions are qualitative. Presented with a new...

A typical undergraduate course on statistical mechanics is arguably misleading because (unintentionally) it does not tell students several i...

In previous posts, I discussed how "spin-crossover" material is a misnomer because many of these materials do not undergo crossov...

In recent posts, I discussed how "spin crossover" is a misnomer for the plethora of organometallic compounds that undergo spin-st...

There are hundreds of organometallic compounds that are classified as spin-crossover compounds . As the temperature is varied the average sp...

Phase diagrams have been ubiquitous in materials science for decades. They show what states of matter are thermodynamically stable depending...

In two dimensions the phase transition that occurs for superfluids, superconductors, and planar classical magnets is qualitatively different...

Atomic nuclei are complex quantum many-body systems. Effective theories have helped provide a better understanding of them. The best-known a...

Recently I bought a small wire of NiTinol to have fun with and use in demonstrations to kids. This video gives a spectacular demonstration a...

In 2016, when I saw the first results from the LIGO gravitational wave interferometer my natural caution and skepticism kicked in. They had ...