University of Tokyo Archives

Hydrogen? Just add water and sunlight

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Hydrogen has been sold to the public as having the potential to be the ultra-clean fuel for the future’s economy. What’s less likely to be mentioned is that 96% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas, coal or other fossil fuels – producing it using renewable electricity is simply too expensive. To realise hydrogen’s full potential, the world needs better […]

Insights into the complex world of amorphous solids

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Solid materials come in many different varieties, from highly rigid, ordered crystalline materials to the more slippery, irregular world of amorphous solids. While we have good theories for understanding the properties and behaviour of crystalline materials, the disorder in the structure of amorphous solids makes their fundamental physics complicated to understand. However, Professor Hideyuki Mizuno at the University of Tokyo […]

Honeycomb wings created by nature’s mechanics

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Forces shape the world we live in, including the bodies we grow in to. Tiny motors in our cells push and pull to create different shapes, surrounding cells respond and react to create diverse patterns of tissue resulting in a world full of unique plants and animals. Drs Sugimura and Ikawa, from Kyoto University, studied the Drosophila fly wing to […]