The newly-discovered shape-recovering liquids defy long-held expectations derived from the laws of thermodynamics, according to a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
"Imagine your favorite Italian salad dressing," said University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Thomas Russell. "It's made up of oil, water and spices, and before you pour it onto your salad, you shake it up so that all the ingredients mix." "It's those spices, those small bits of something else, that allow water and oil, which are normally mutually exclusive, to mix, a process called emulsification and which is described by the laws of thermodynamics." "Emulsification underlies a vast range of technologies and applications far beyond condiments," said Anthony Raykh, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "One day, I was in the lab mixing up a batch of this scientific salad dressing to see what I could create — only instead of spices, I was using magnetized particles of nickel, because you can engineer…