We werejoined for a Q&A today by Craig J. Fennie , atheoretical materials scientist at Cornell who recently gain ground a MacArthur Genius grant . In between do the geezerhood old enquiry raw nanofab facility or backyard synchrotron ( “ synchrotron hands down ! ” ) and share some sample interrogative sentence with which to impress the thermoelectric engineer in our life-time , Fennieanswered a interrogative sentence from commenterAverageDrafteron whether it was theoretically possible to create atoms with customizable electron configurations :
https://gizmodo.com/ask-a-theoretical-materials-science-anything-you-want-1456795109
If I literally answer your query I would say , ‘ not really , ’ the get-up-and-go to do such a thing are much much greater than could be used in a practical material ( this is the kingdom of nuclear physical science ) . But this is a great opportunity to remark the beauty of material physics and alchemy .
Materials are made of atom , which we kind of understand , but when we put these atom together to make a material they take on a life-time of their own , which ca n’t be counter with understanding the mote . ( retrieve about a classic example , rubbernecking , we all know how to describe how a railcar works and can write an algorithm to force a single machine on a road today . But put many many cars on the route , young rule of driving emerge , one would never guess based on how a car works that if there is an accident on the other side of the route that that would pretend how you drive ) . This is what we call “ emergent properties ” . In a material , one known emergent property is something just like you take about and is the basis of much research today .
Image : Vichy Deal / Shutterstock
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