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A Quasi-Quasicrystal

Posted by kdawson on Tue Aug 05, 2008 01:47 AM
from the fractional-quasiness dept.
Math Science
An anonymous reader sends along a link to a mindbending article in Science News on quasicrystals — odd materials with a structure partway between order and disorder. Now researchers have found something even odder: a material that's partway between a quasicrystal and a regular crystal. The order in the new structure is provided by the Fibonacci sequence. It was constructed with plastic beads and laser beams, so no new materials science inventions are on the horizon. "'We are absolutely sure that this structure should have properties that are not usual,' Mikhael says, because materials with odd structures almost always do. Now they just have to figure out what those properties are."
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Submission: A quasi-quasicrystal by Anonymous Coward
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  • Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by haltenfrauden27 (1338125) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @01:50AM (#24476943) Homepage

    "'We are absolutely sure that this structure should have properties that are not usual,' Mikhael says, because materials with odd structures almost always do."

    Sounds like something out of a Monty Python sketch.

    Seriously, though, I'd rather hear about what interesting/new discoveries come out of this strange material than just hear about the possibility of its existence.

    • Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Paradigm_Complex (968558) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @02:09AM (#24477023)

      Seriously, though, I'd rather hear about what interesting/new discoveries come out of this strange material than just hear about the possibility of its existence.

      When that's announced people will complain that the information is pretty useless and would rather hear about practical applications found for it.
      When that's announced people will complain about why they haven't heard about this before. Others will complain about how it was on digg years ago and how slashdot is slow.

      So shut up and discuss the interesting stuff we have know now :D
      Or get high and stare at the trippy pictures :D
      Or make an off topic meme-based joke :(

    • we used to just split hairs.

      Now we split crystals. And get quasicrystals. Which were supposed to be unusual.

      And now we have quasi-quasicrystals. And then they're "not usual."

      And next we can get something somewhere between a quasicrystal and a quasiquasicrystal.

      I'd rather hear about what interesting/new discoveries come out of this strange material than just hear about the possibility of its existence.

      In 10 years' time you'll be hearing about the quasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasiquasicrystal, but we s

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        For an example of a practical use, Teflon is a quasicrystal. I read somewhere that they tend to be slippery.

      • And next we can get something somewhere between a quasicrystal and a quasiquasicrystal.

        So if I'm building a database about materials, I ought to make the crystallynessosity field a float, instead of a boolean?

      • I've already got a quasiquasicrystal, partway between crystal and not-crystal, in my garage. See, I accidentally mixed a bunch of salt into this big tub of vaseline...

    • Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:4, Informative)

      by dontmakemethink (1186169) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @02:59AM (#24477219)

      "'We are absolutely sure that this structure should have properties that are not usual,' Mikhael says, because materials with odd structures almost always do."

      Sounds like George Dubya Bush paraphrasing Yoda.

    • Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dwater (72834) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @05:13AM (#24477731)

      "We are absolutely sure that this structure should have properties that are not usual,' Mikhael says, because materials with odd structures almost always do."

      Right. What kind of logic does this guy use?

      "We are absolutely sure it should have 'something'... because ... others almost always do..."

      "We're...100%....80%....60%..." Add a few more even 'less certain' words, like "surely", "perhaps", "maybe" and the confidence in his assertion would have dropped from 100% certainty all the way to 0% certainty in a single sentence.

      I mean, hedging your bets or what? This guy should be a politician.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by crovira (10242)

      No.

      But the Fibonacci sequence is fascinating.

      This material is definitely odd. (Lets hope it can be related down atomic scale.)

      The reason it makes a good insulator is the Fibonacci gaps. They make for discrete jumps like quantum jumps because there is no smooth path for electron 'energy bands' to follow.

  • A truckload of beads for your stock options! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2008, @01:51AM (#24476951)

    Hey, it has worked before...

  • I could be a random resistance element that could be used as a random number seed. Or it could be the mythical room temperature non-conductor.

  • Now they just have to figure out what those properties are.

    1) Does it taste like chicken?

  • "found" or "constructed" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ulash (1266140) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @02:40AM (#24477159)

    Which one is it? The summary needs to make up its mind. Either it is something that occurs naturally (and TFA seems to suggest otherwise) in which case it would be "found" or it is something cooked up in a lab which would make it "constructed".

    • Indeed. If it is naturally occurring, it should be called a quasi-quasicrystal, but if it is manmade, it should be called a pseudo-quasicrystal :D

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by renoX (11677)

      Both!

      Maybe you should read TFA: it was both found and constructed, found because they didn't expect it, constructed because it's not something which occurs naturally.

      • Both!

        Maybe you should read TFA: it was both found and constructed, found because they didn't expect it, constructed because it's not something which occurs naturally.

        Isn't the word for that "dumbfound"?

  • I have (Score:3, Funny)

    by Konster (252488) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @02:41AM (#24477165)

    I have isolated a compound in my lab. I call it the Politiquasicrystal. I have determined that it can bend the truth with no expenditure of energy.

    • Well, for those that didn't RTFA, I did for
      you... and no... they didn't go to a piece
      goods shop and buy a sack of necklace beads.

      FTA:
      To simplify matters, the team set out to create a quasicrystal from micron-sized plastic beads called colloidal particles.

      For those unfamiliar with colloidals, it is
      from the Greek work kolla, meaning glue as the
      first colloids were just that. Particulate size
      is such that surface area is greater than volume
      thus the particulates tend not to settle from
      gravity.

      They're pretty usefu

    • It's nothing compared to my iQuasicrystal and its Reality Distortion Field.

    • I have isolated a compound in my lab.

      So have I, but unfortunately the margin is too small to write its chemical formula in.

  • Paraphrasing TFA (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05 2008, @03:23AM (#24477299)

    We'd like to study these crystals, but we require more vespene gas!

  • I realize someone is going to mod me flamebait or troll, but I just wanted to say the images remind me of the cellular automata simulations from Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" in that they are semi-ordered but non-predictable. Neat stuff regardless.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by oodaloop (1229816)
        Every other reference to Wolfram on /. seems to be rather derogatory. He's seen as stealing others' ideas and shamelessly self-promoting. His "A New Kind of Science", at 1200 pages, was self-published and unedited. For these reasons and others, he doesn't seem to have the highest reputation, though despite it all I found ANKOS pretty amazing.
  • "That was non- non-non non-heinous!"

    • Re:Penrose tiling? (Score:5, Funny)

      by whyloginwhysubscribe (993688) on Tuesday August 05 2008, @03:14AM (#24477267)
      They don't exist anymore - they got bought out by Hawking's Bathrooms in 2004.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by feranick (858651)
      Because it's one of the several possible tiling, and it's not exclusive. In other words, there are other tilings that fit specific type of quasicrystals. There is no reason to pick Penrose's one. What has been found in TFA, is more general. In fact the tiling in this system is very different from any other, since it is somewhat an hybrid between a conventional quasicrystal and a crystal. Why are you all so obsessed with Penrose's tiling?
      • Why are you all so obsessed with Penrose's tiling?

        To quote Wikipedia:

        A Penrose tiling has many remarkable properties, most notably:

        • It is nonperiodic which means that it lacks any translational symmetry. More informally, a shifted copy will never match the original exactly.
        • Any finite region in a tiling appears infinitely many times in that tiling and, in fact, in any other tiling. This property would be trivially true of a tiling with translational symmetry but is non-trivial when applied to the non-

    • Quasi is 'as-if' or 'sort-of'

      Fere is 'almost' - which rolls of the tongue slightly easier...

      So think these new crystals could be called Fere quassi crystallinus (almost sort-of crystals) instead ;)

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