Explaining the mysterious dynamics of glassy materials
Colorful church windows, beads on a necklace and many of our
favorite plastics share something in common -- they all belong to a state of
matter known as glasses. 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 by showing that
their energy landscapes are far rougher than previously believed. The findings
appear April 24 in the journal Nature Communications.