Experimental Physicist
New Dawn Bio
Join New Dawn Bio as an #Experimental Physicist to help us build something the world has never seen before: premium wood grown without cutting trees.
See the full job description on jobRxiv: https://jobrxiv.org/job/new-dawn-bio-27778-experimental-physicist/
#biologicalphysics #biophysics #experimentalphysics #softmatter #ScienceJobs #hiring #research
https://jobrxiv.org/job/new-dawn-bio-27778-experimental-physicist/?fsp_sid=13020
Electric fields can reshape fluid motion at the nanoscale.
In polarizable nanochannels, induced-charge electrokinetics creates vortex patterns that can trap, eject, or steer nanoparticles depending on wall properties.
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0322984
#Nanofluidics #Electrokinetics #FluidDynamics #SoftMatter #LabOnChip
Reaction-controlled ripening can invert intuition: on patterned surfaces, bubble growth is not always “big wins, small loses”.
Geometry and contact angle reshape the chemical potential landscape, enabling reversed volume exchange between bubbles.
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1103/pynn-xgv9
#FluidDynamics #MultiphaseFlow #SoftMatter #Interfaces #physics
What controls the shape of melting ice?
This study shows that infrared heating can trigger thermally driven Marangoni flows that sculpt melt ponds and channels in real time. A lab-scale window into processes relevant to glaciers and ice shelves.
#IceMelting #MarangoniFlow #SoftMatter #FluidMechanics #Cryosphere
A long-theorized material has become reality: DNA-based Olympic gels. Their structure is stabilized not by chemical crosslinks, but by mechanically interlocked molecular rings. A striking example of how geometry and topology shape material behavior.
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-04-olympic-gels-theorized-class-dna.html
An interdisciplinary research team led by Dr. Elisha Krieg at the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (IPF) has successfully synthesized and characterized Olympic gels, a long-theorized class of soft materials. Unlike conventional gels, which are held together by chemical crosslinks, Olympic gels derive their structural stability from the mechanical interlocking of ring-shaped molecules, similar to chain mail.
A linear programming method extracts individual hard-sphere sizes from blurred microscopy videos, reaching sub-0.1% error without prior knowledge of size distribution. Works from short noisy trajectories.
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1103/x7d9-9w3x
#Colloids #SoftMatter #Microscopy #Optimization #ComplexSystems
What do boat wakes and biological tissues have in common? A new study shows that ultrasoft solids support wake patterns similar to fluids, opening new possibilities for probing soft materials through surface waves.
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ship-soft-tissues-exploring-fluid.html
#SoftMatter #WavePhysics #Biophysics #FluidMechanics #MaterialsScience
A new study by scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) shows that when a pressure disturbance moves across an ultrasoft elastic material, such as a gel or a biological tissue, it generates a V-shaped wake that's strikingly similar to the waves that travel behind a boat.
Today, five years ago at 11:15 sharp, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. I’m not usually one to celebrate an anniversary. But because this one has taken me by surprise—by how much time has flown—I thought it’d be nice to mark the occassion. I've made a mostly visual summary of my thesis to celebrate:
https://kedara.eu/colloidal-systems/
#Colloids #SoftMatter #Physics #PhD #BrownianMotion #BlogPost
Why can some fluids harden under impact?
Researchers tracked millimeter-sized cornstarch droplets hitting a surface and uncovered three distinct impact regimes, including a surprising liquid-to-solid transition during spreading.
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-04-droplet-impacts-reveal-physics-thickening.html
#Physics #FluidMechanics #SoftMatter #Rheology #ImpactDynamics
From ketchup to quicksand, non-Newtonian fluids have long fascinated and puzzled scientists. Unlike ordinary fluids, their flow properties change depending on how much force is applied, but the precise mechanics governing this behavior remain poorly understood—particularly under rapid deformation. Now, a team led by Xiang Cheng at the University of Minnesota has used droplet impacts to probe these dynamics in new detail, uncovering behaviors which have eluded physicists so far. Their findings appear in Physical Review Letters.
A cornstarch-water droplet can behave like a liquid and a solid at the same time, depending on how it is stressed.
High-speed imaging reveals how these “oobleck” drops reshape on impact, highlighting the surprising physics of shear-thickening fluids.
🔗 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01109-3
#FluidDynamics #SoftMatter #Rheology #ComplexFluids #physics
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