Levitating particles move to the music

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2926, 2013, pág. 10
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Sound isn't the only way to levitate stuff. Magnets or electrical fields can do it if the objects being lifted have magnetic or electrical properties. But acoustic levitation poses no such constraints, says Dimos Poulikakos of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. To go a step further and move suspended objects, Poulikakos and his colleagues have now built a system of computer-controlled resonators that creates a standing wave with a varying shape. As the shape changes, the nodes move, carrying trapped objects along with them. For one test, the team suspended a particle of sodium at one node, and a droplet of water at another--and then brought them together in a burst of fizzing.