Crystal/Liquid Interface (IMAGE)

Emory Health Sciences

Crystal/Liquid Interface

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"Imagine you're a water molecule in a glass of ice water, and you're floating right on the boundary of the ice and the water," proposes Emory University physicist Eric Weeks. "So how do you know if you're a solid or a liquid?" Weeks' lab recently captured the first images of what's actually happening in this fuzzy area of the crystal/liquid interface. The lab's data, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), make the waves between the two states of matter visible for the first time. The visual evidence shows that the fuzzy region between the two states is extremely narrow, Weeks says. "The transition from completely organized to completely disorganized goes very quickly, spatially." For more information and video, visit eScienceCommons, http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2009/08/crystal-liquid-interface-visible-for.html.

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Eric Weeks Lab/Emory University

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