ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Just add water: 3-D silicon shapes fold themselves when wetted by microscopic droplets
• Spiders know the meaning of web music
• Proteins 'ring like bells': Quantum mechanics and biochemical reactions
• Which look bigger, packages of complicated shape or packages of simple shape?

Just add water: 3-D silicon shapes fold themselves when wetted by microscopic droplets Posted: 03 Jun 2014 08:41 AM PDT Researchers have taken the precise art of origami down to the microscopic scale. Using only a drop of water, the scientists have folded flat sheets of silicon nitride into cubes, pyramids, half soccer-ball-shaped bowls and long triangular structures that resemble Toblerone chocolate bars – an omnium-gatherum of geometric objects, which are almost too tiny to see with the naked eye.

Spiders know the meaning of web music Posted: 03 Jun 2014 06:25 AM PDT Spider silk transmits vibrations across a wide range of frequencies so that, when plucked like a guitar string, its sound carries information about prey, mates, and even the structural integrity of a web. The discovery was made when researchers fired bullets and lasers at spider silk to study how it vibrates.

Proteins 'ring like bells': Quantum mechanics and biochemical reactions Posted: 03 Jun 2014 06:24 AM PDT As far back as 1948, Erwin Schrödinger -- the inventor of modern quantum mechanics -- published the book 'What is life?' In it, he suggested that quantum mechanics and coherent ringing might be at the basis of all biochemical reactions. At the time, this idea never found wide acceptance because it was generally assumed that vibrations in protein molecules would be too rapidly damped. Now, scientists have shown that he may have been on the right track after all.

Which look bigger, packages of complicated shape or packages of simple shape? Posted: 02 Jun 2014 12:59 PM PDT Which look bigger, packages of complicated shape or packages of simple shape? Some prior research shows that complex packages appear larger than simple packages of equal volume, while other research has shown the opposite -- that simple packages look bigger than the more complex. Researchers believe they have resolved this dilemma.

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