When things get glassy, molecules go fractal
Thursday, April 24, 2014 - 17:32
in Physics & Chemistry
School children learn the difference between liquids and gases, but centuries of scholarship have failed to produce consensus about how to categorize glass. Now, combining theory and numerical simulations, researchers have resolved an enduring question in the theory of glasses, showing that their energy landscapes are far rougher than previously believed. The new model shows that molecules in glassy materials settle into a fractal hierarchy of states.