Molecules move faster on a rough terrain
Friday, January 17, 2020 - 12:44
in Physics & Chemistry
Roughness, the presence of irregularities on a surface, is commonly associated with slower motion and stickiness. This is true at different length scales: at human size (1 meter), it takes longer to walk along a path that goes up and down, rather than walking on a flat road. At the size of smaller objects (1/100 - 1/1000 meter), Italians use pasta shapes with a rough surface, e.g. rigatoni, to make better adhesive surfaces for the tomato sauce and cheese. Until now, however, no experiment was able to test if the behavior of molecules really follows the same trend observed at human scale.