Scientists have demonstrated that negative refraction can be achieved using atomic arrays -- without the need for artificially manufactured metamaterials. Scientists have long sought to control light ...

A world-famous light experiment from 1801 has now been carried out with sound for the first time. Research by physicists in ...

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www ...

Light energy travels in straight lines and in waves. Light energy travels in straight lines and in waves. When light strikes a plane or a flat surface, it reflects in a manner that is predictable. For ...

When it comes to light, certain types of fabricated materials behave in a radically different manner from ordinary materials like water and glass: they have negative refractive indices, so that light ...

A pulse of light sets the tempo in the material. Atoms in a crystalline sheet just a few atoms thick begin to move—not ...

When people look into a mirror, they see an image of themselves behind the glass. That image results from light rays encountering the shiny surface and bouncing back, or reflecting, providing a ...