These days, many retailers and manufacturers are tracking their products using RFID, or radio-frequency identification tags. Often, these tags come in the form of paper-based labels outfitted with a simple antenna and memory chip. When slapped on a milk carton or jacket collar, RFID tags act as smart signatures, transmitting information to a radio-frequency reader…
Student-Built Instrument Headed to Asteroid and Back
Who can say they’ve been to an asteroid and back? In 2023, more than 50 MIT students may claim this feat, at least through the activities of a small, shoebox-sized instrument named REXIS (Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer). The instrument, which was designed and built by students from MIT and Harvard University, will be one of…
Vanishing Friction
Friction is all around us, working against the motion of tires on pavement, the scrawl of a pen across paper, and even the flow of proteins through the bloodstream. Whenever two surfaces come in contact, there is friction, except in very special cases where friction essentially vanishes — a phenomenon, known as “superlubricity,” in which…
Plugging Up Leaky Graphene
For faster, longer-lasting water filters, some scientists are looking to graphene —thin, strong sheets of carbon — to serve as ultrathin membranes, filtering out contaminants to quickly purify high volumes of water. Graphene’s unique properties make it a potentially ideal membrane for water filtration or desalination. But there’s been one main drawback to its wider…
Tunneling Across a Tiny Gap
“Phonon tunneling” explains heat flow across nanometer-wide gaps, study finds. Conduction and thermal radiation are two ways in which heat is transferred from one object to another: Conduction is the process by which heat flows between objects in physical contact, such as a pot of tea on a hot stove, while thermal radiation describes heat…