News

 

Latest News

Simon Sponberg

NSF has awarded the interdisciplinary team six years of funding to support the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute. The Institute, which includes a Georgia Tech contingent of researchers led by Co-PI Simon Sponberg, aims to bridge research on muscles spanning the molecular level to the whole animal to understand dynamic locomotion.

James Sowell, director of the Georgia Tech Observatory. Photo: Rob Felt

This year brings another February 29. Why do leap years occur? Jim Sowell is a principal academic professional in the School of Physics and the director of the Georgia Tech Observatory. He says the leap year’s creation goes back to Julius Caesar.

Georgia Tech Energy Materials Day 2024

Energy materials facilitate the conversion or transmission of energy. They also play an essential role in how we store energy, reduce power consumption, and develop cleaner, efficient energy solutions.

Chunhui (Rita) Du and Alex Blumenthal

Mathematician Alex Blumenthal and Physicist Chunhui (Rita) Du are among 126 early-career researchers who have been awarded prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships for 2024. This year’s appointees also include Georgia Tech faculty Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena of the College of Engineering, and Daniel Genkin of the College of Computing. 

Events

Mar 25

School of Physics Colloquium

Life in Complex Fluids

Mar 27

School of Physics Seminar - Professor Robert Hovden

Pushing Atoms By Picometers In Low Dimensional Materials

Mar 27

PUSHING ATOMS BY PICOMETERS IN LOW DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS

Dramatic electronic changes occur when atoms are pushed just a few picometers in a crystal

Apr 01

School of Physics Colloquium

Nadya Mason (UIUC)

Apr 01

School of Physics Colloquium

No Strain, No Gain: Modifying Transport in 2D Materials by Engineering Strain

Apr 03

School of Physics Seminar - Professor Hua Chen

Transporting the Shape of Spin: From Spintronics to Multipoletronics

Apr 03

Transporting the Shape of Spin: From Spintronics to Multipoletronics

Significant developments in spintronics over the past decades have established that electron spin can be transported and manipulated by electrical means.

Experts in the News

Odd things can happen when a wave meets a boundary. In the ocean, tsunami waves that are hardly noticeable in deep water can become quite large at the continental shelf and shore, as the waves slow and their mass moves upward. In a recent study led by School of Physics Dunn Family Professor Daniel Goldman and published in the journal Physical Review Letters, scientists have shown that a floating, symmetric oscillating robot will experience forces when it comes close to a boundary. These forces can be used for self-propulsion without the need for more typical mechanisms such as a propeller.

Tech Xplore 2024-03-09T00:00:00-05:00

The way muscles work changes when a person goes from slow, even movements to rapid, unsteady movements. Anyone who’s pulled a muscle after a sudden motion knows that. What we don’t know is exactly how muscle function changes when dynamic movement is introduced. A new NSF-funded project co-led by Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics and School of Biological Sciences, will examine dynamic muscle function of humans and animals with the goal of creating improved physical therapy and rehabilitation programs and mobility assistance devices. That translates to more humans who can move with less pain. 

Northern Arizona University 2024-03-04T00:00:00-05:00

Are our bodies solid or liquid? This question begins the exploration of a study led by Zeb Rocklin, an assistant professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech, that blurs the lines between solid and liquid states by examining materials that exhibit properties of both. The study, titled 'Rigidity percolation in a random tensegrity via analytic graph theory,' published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), introduces a novel approach to understanding the behavior of deformable solids through the incorporation of cable-like elements, offering insights with significant implications for biology, engineering, and nanotechnology.

BNN 2024-02-29T00:00:00-05:00

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working with a team from China’s Tianjin University, claim to have developed the first functional semiconductor from graphene, a single-layer carbon structure renowned for its robust bonds. Led by Walter De Heer, Regents' Professor in the School of Physics, the study published in Nature details a graphene semiconductor compatible with standard microelectronic processing methods, a fundamental requirement for any viable alternative to silicon.

Electronic Engineer Times Europe 2024-02-28T00:00:00-05:00

When Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made the observation that came to be known as Moore's Law, he projected that transistor density would continue doubling in density every two years... for another ten years. Working with Tianjin University in China, though, researchers at Georgia Tech have made a breakthrough in this department by growing graphene on doped silicon carbide wafers, introducing impurities into the graphene that give it a usable band gap, enabling the researchers to create graphene transistors the size of a carbon atom. In research led by School of Physics Regents' Professor Walter De Heer, these switches can reach into the teraHertz range and run cooler than silicon transistors, potentially breathing new life into the aging Moore's Law.

RedShark News 2024-02-27T00:00:00-05:00

A recent publication from the group of Prof. Dan Goldman made it to the Cover of Physical Review Letters vol. 132, issue 8 (https://journals.aps.org/prl/covers/132/8). The research article “Probing Hydrodynamic Fluctuation-Induced Forces with an Oscillating Robot”, by Steven W. Tarr, Joseph S. Brunner, Daniel Soto, and Daniel I. Goldman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 084001 was published on 20 February 2024, and was also selected as an Editor’s Suggestion (https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.084001).

Physical Review Letters 2024-02-23T00:00:00-05:00