NU Sci Staff

Connections in Chaos: Breaking Down Networks with Professor Barabási By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics, 2021 This article was originally published as part of Issue 37: Interaction. NU Sci spoke with Albert-László Barabási, director of the Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) and Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern. As a pioneer and current innovator in network […]

Fat stacks of thin materials: The rich phenomena of twisted 2D layers By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics and Mathematics, 2021 Source: NIST This article was originally published as part of Issue 40: Wonder. For most of the history of materials science, layered crystal growth has been limited to the particular arrangements in which atoms tend to

Mosh Pits: A Lot of Noise By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics & Math, 2021 Source: Pixabay This article was originally published as part of Issue 38: People. Metal concert attendees are familiar with deafening music, bright lights, Lovecraftian graphics, and, of course, rowdy crowds. Bands often encourage mosh pits, crowd surfing, and “walls of death,” creating

Advances in Simulations of Incompressible Liquids By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics, 2021 This article was originally published as part of Issue 35: Motion. The Navier-Stokes equations are a set of differential equations that directly arise from Newton’s Second Law and are used to simulate the motion of fluids. Differential equations, commonly seen in electrical circuits,

Science Friday and the Stories that Should be Told By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics, 2021 Source: Pixabay This article was originally published as part of Issue 36: Local. New podcasts seem to pop up every day, but Science Friday has been around for 25 years, airing for two hours every Friday on public radio. More than

Smart Glass: Making the Future Less Bright By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics, 2021 Source: Pixabay This article was originally published as part of Issue 34: Color. The end may be near for finicky window blinds as more research funds the development of electrochromic devices. Electrochromism is the phenomenon of a material changing color due to the

The atom and its entropy By Sunanda Kannapadi, MS Biotechnology, 2021 Underwater atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll, 1946. Source: Pixabay Millions of years ago, our universe started off with a bang that shook us to our core, and nature decided to package its impact into a minuscule particle — the atom. Scientific endeavors in the field have sufficiently

Magnetic skyrmions: New bits of spin By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics & Mathematics, 2021 The 2D vector field of: a) a Néel-type skyrmion and b) a Bloch-type skyrmion. Source: Wikimedia Electrons have a fundamental property called spin, which can have an orientation value of ½ or -½ — up or down. Figuring out how to induce particular directions