A Quasi-Quasicrystal 121
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."
Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:5, Insightful)
"'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)
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.
:D :D :(
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
Or get high and stare at the trippy pictures
Or make an off topic meme-based joke
New meme (Score:4, Funny)
Almost but not entirely unlike crystal?
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Hmmm... Psh, that meme is almost but not entirely unlike crystal.
There we go. If you follow the line above the one you were referring to in my previous post first, it works a lot better.
cheap shot (Score:2, Funny)
Thats almost but not entirely unlike a meme.
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The women that know me think otherwise... they ever say the hardest material known to them is my... head! :\
Re:New meme (Score:5, Funny)
It can be used to build a machine making something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:4, Funny)
"Or make an off topic meme-based joke"
You mean, like teaching sharks with lasers on their heads to swim in formation so they could generate quasi-crystals as they went about their nefarious business? I am above such childish antics!
Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our shark-toting Fibonacci based Hitler laser fiends, you insensitive clod!
Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, insensitive sharks tote Fibonacci, you Hitler-based laser crystal!
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If it would ever be possible to kill people over the internet, this thread would do it. :D
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you made a comparison to hitler or nazi's, apparently the discussion is over.
Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:4, Funny)
So shut up and discuss the interesting stuff we have know now :D
Is that what they call quasi quasi moderation?
That's cwazsy.
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In Korea, only old people will complain about these things.
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So shut up and discuss the interesting stuff we have know now :D :D
Or get high and stare at the trippy pictures
Can't I do both?
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"Nobody expects the unusual properties!"
In the old days... (Score:3, Funny)
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
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For an example of a practical use, Teflon is a quasicrystal. I read somewhere that they tend to be slippery.
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For an example of a practical use, Teflon is a quasicrystal. I read somewhere that they tend to be slippery.
So these Quasi-Quasi-Crystals (TM) will send us down a slippery slope?
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Let's not jump to conclusions here.
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Let's not jump to conclusions here.
You're new here, aren't you?
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I'm stapled to my desk chair, you insensitive clod!
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So if I'm building a database about materials, I ought to make the crystallynessosity field a float, instead of a boolean?
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Property #1: the ability to endow a grad student with his PhD and the university with a sizable chunk of grant money.
There. Fixed that for you...
Fix or Fail? (Score:1)
Re:Anyone else find that quote hilarious? (Score:4, Informative)
"'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)
"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.
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What's the problem? The answer to the question wether these structures have remarkable properties is definitely 'Maybe'.
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Are you sure?
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Yes. Very sure.
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"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 think what they're trying to say is that 60% of the time, it works every time.
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> I think what they're trying to say is that 60% of the time, it works every time. ...and they're certain of that because in the past it has worked most of the time.
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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)
Hey, it has worked before...
Quasy-quasycrossbreeds (Score:1)
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That was the first thing I thought of too.
quasiquasicrystals, then quasiquasicrystalcrystals, then quasicrystalcrystalquasicrystalquasis...
You're dealing with forces beyond your understanding....
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Apparently... that would be ALL forces then ? :p
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Any reason for the perverse spelling of quasi?
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# from the ice age to the dole age, /#
there is but one concern -
I have just discovered:
Some crystals are more crystalline than others,
Some crystals are more crystalline than others
Other crystals are intermediate in crystallinity between the first...
Possibilities (Score:4, Funny)
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I could be a random resistance element that could be used as a random number seed.
The fact that you're on /. alone disqualifies you from being used as a seed for anything.
First one is easy! (Score:2, Funny)
Now they just have to figure out what those properties are.
1) Does it taste like chicken?
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"Or make an off topic meme-based joke"
"1) Does it taste like chicken?"
2) Does it run linux?
3) Does it have a girl friend?
4) Does it live in it's Mothers Basement?
5) Does it Profit?
6) Profit!
Ops.. I think we missed a step!
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Does it END?
1) Yes.
2) No.
3) Do you feel ENJOY !!! Sorry for Disturb
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And I don't think they could work out what chicken tastes like, which is why chicken tastes like everything else.
Shut up Mouse !
"found" or "constructed" (Score:4, Insightful)
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".
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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.
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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)
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.
Plastic beads, like you make a necklace out of? (Score:2, Informative)
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
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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.
And for those unfamiliar with mathematics, the bit relating surface area to volume does not make any sense.
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Mayonnaise is a decent example. Mayo is essentially bubble-fied oil suspended in a viscous protein "gel" (the egg). The bubbles of oil get in the way of the protein collapsing, and vice-versa. But if you heat mayonnaise, the suspension breaks as the protein gains enough energy to deform the bubbles.
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So have I, but unfortunately the margin is too small to write its chemical formula in.
Penrose tiling? (Score:1)
Re:Penrose tiling? (Score:5, Funny)
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I was wondering that myself... first
thing I thought when I saw the graphics
was, 'hey... wasn't that my old AfterDark95
screensaver?'
[ http://afterdarksaver.blogspot.com/2007/11/penrose.html [blogspot.com] ]
That and good ole satori...
[ http://telcontar.net/DesktopPics/satori.php [telcontar.net] ]
-AI
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To quote Wikipedia:
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mindbending crystals? (Score:1)
Paraphrasing TFA (Score:3, Funny)
We'd like to study these crystals, but we require more vespene gas!
Name? (Score:1, Interesting)
Quasiquasicrystal doesn't roll of the tongue...
Quasi is roughly the same as almost, right?
What is the latin equivalent of "Barely"?
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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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Not new, really. (Score:1, Informative)
In the 90s, I was a PhD student in theorethical physics. One of the paper I read showed a crystal with a structure based on the fibonacci sequence. Such structures were also realised in superlattices at LinkÃping University, Sweden, in a cooperation between the theoretical physics group and the thin film group. You could contact Dr. Rolf Riklund for the details, his PhD student did the study.
ANKOS? (Score:2)
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As a non-scientist, I found ANKOS mind-blowing. It was a world-changing book for me, at least the parts I could understand. It challenged everything I thought I knew about predictability, order, chaos, randomness, the search of extra-terrestrial life, and how stuff works in general. I remember having the craziest dreams for th
It's the Omega molecule! (Score:1)
Bill and Ted-ism's (Score:2, Funny)
you're only quasi-evil. (Score:1)
"You're toying with powerful forces here." (Score:1)
Next they'l lfind that... (Score:1)
Quasiness is quantized, and two quasicrystals must differ in some parameter by n times a constant.
Quasi-mechanics.
Quasicrystalline approximants; a rather old idea (Score:1)
The idea of a "quasi-quasi-crystal" which approximates the forbidden symmetries of a quasicrystal quite well (e.g. almost-perfect-but-no
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Stuff that matters, to people who don't think.
PhysOrg [physorg.com] and Science Daily [sciencedaily.com] will fill your need for hard news. :)
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So I should just come to slashdot for rumours and gossip? What is this, a knitting circle of nerds?
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What is this, a knitting circle of nerds?
No, that's what you end up with when someone confuses Perl and purl.