Caution: Weird material shrinks when warm
Thursday, October 8, 2015 - 17:20
in Physics & Chemistry
Most materials swell when warm, and shrink when cool. But some weird materials do the opposite. Although thermal expansion, and the cracking and warping that often result, occurs everyday -- in buildings, electronics, and almost anything else exposed to wide temperature swings -- physicists have trouble explaining why solids behave that way. New research into a material that has negative thermal expansion may lead to a better understanding of why materials change volume with temperature at all.