Bright idea: Harry Atwater is working on a plasmonic solar cell A new way of creating a voltage by shining light on a solid has been developed by researchers in the US and Europe. Unlike most ...

Every hacker out there is familiar with the zaps and sizzles of the Tesla coil, or the crash and thunder of lighting strikes on our hallowed Earth. These phenomena all involve the physics of plasma, a ...

Download this article in PDF format. Jacques and Pierre Curie, French physics, discovered the piezoelectric effect in 1880. When some solid material is mechanically compressed or stressed, the ...