Physical Review Letters<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe first discovery happened two years ago, when Wang and Martirossyan were using an existing method of creating disorder inside a colloidal crystal, intending to recreate results Gerbode had produced before to use in a new experiment. Had everything gone as planned, the students would have created a colloid, a mixture of fluids and particles, which they would have been able to manipulate with a laser beam, grabbing the particles and moving them around inside the colloid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen they were creating the colloid, mixing together the fluids and the particles, they accidentally made the wrong mixture of fluids, so that instead of light bending to the left when it enters the particles, it bends to the right,\u201d Gerbode explains. \u201cSo instead of trapping the particle and pulling it in to the focus of the laser beam, the light repels particles and pushes them away from the laser region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Optical blasting was born. \u201cIt took me a day or so to realize that this is way more useful than what we\u2019re trying to do,\u201d Gerbode says. \u201cThis can be extremely useful, and it was accidentally invented by Harvey Mudd students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second discovery, realizing optical blasting\u2019s ability to sculpt grain boundaries within a colloid, was also an accident. Wang had gone into the lab late one summer night to work on an unrelated project. He got tired and decided to take a break by playing with optical blasting for fun. That\u2019s when he discovered that optical blasting attracted grain boundaries, which are the interfaces between the colloid particle beads. He started drawing smiley faces within the colloid. When Wang\u2019s labmates checked the online Gerbode Lab log Aug. 8, 2016, they found this entry from the early morning hours:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Hubris of Man: MUAHAHAHAHAHA! AFTER HOURS OF EXPERIMENTATION I HAVE DONE IT. WITH THESE TWO HANDS OF MINE AND AN 800 MILLIWATT LASER, I HAVE CREATED LIFE. I HAVE CREATED ART. I HAVE CREATED . . . lots of grain boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An image of the work followed the entry; colloid particle beads shaped into two circle \u201ceyes\u201d and a wide \u201csmile\u201d by neatly drawn grain boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSeeing that this wasn\u2019t just a small way to create tiny bumps in grain boundaries but rather a way to sculpt new crystallites and create them in whatever shape you want was a very exciting discovery,\u201d Gerbode says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the following year, Gerbode and her students, with Cash taking the lead, worked diligently to study the physics of why this sculpting phenomena worked and how to quantify it. The paper, which is receiving a lot of attention from the physics community, explains the research, outlining why optical blasting attracts grain boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe reason it\u2019s getting attention now is partly because of the physics of why it works, but mostly because it works so well and there are such exciting implications for what can be done with it,\u201d Gerbode says. \u201cA lot of people make a living creating materials made of colloidal crystals. The presence of grain boundaries in these materials can be desirable or problematic. As far as we know, this is the first publication demonstrating a way to actually get in there and change the boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gerbode goes on to explain that the ability to write grain boundaries allows physicists to \u201ctune\u201d the boundaries however they want, affecting the way light propagates in a material and the way a material structure acts. \u201cWhat\u2019s so cool about our technology,\u201d she says, \u201cis that the physics behind it is quite universal. Now that we have this tool to draw grains, it opens up a whole new direction for experiments in colloidal physics. For example, something no one\u2019s ever been able to do before is create two grains within another crystal and watch how they interact. Do they coalesce? What are the dynamics? Can you pull grains apart? There are theories that no one\u2019s ever been able to test experimentally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gerbode\u2019s excitement about the project is understandable, as is her effusive pride in her students, who, with the publication of their paper, are experiencing as undergraduates something many postdocs hope to achieve. \u201cI respect these students so, so much,\u201d Gerbode says. \u201cThey put in a tremendous amount of work. HMC undergrads are exceptional. We all worked our butts off and had so much fun doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wang and Martirossyan graduated in 2017, but the remaining students will now have optical blasting as another tool in the Gerbode Lab. Ludlow and Cash are both pursuing thesis projects related to the physics discovered during this process. Everyone is eager to see what comes of new experiments, and, of course, they\u2019re open to serendipitous interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo much of experimental research is serendipity,\u201d Gerbode says. \u201cOne of the hardest parts is recognizing when you\u2019ve found something important. That\u2019s what becoming a scientist has meant for me in my lifetime. It\u2019s not being brilliant and planning everything perfectly. It\u2019s keeping your eyes open and being open-minded.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Science and serendipity are old pals, meeting throughout history when people intending to do one thing realize they\u2019ve accidentally discovered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":6247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,217],"class_list":["post-6246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-physics","category-unlisted"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14745,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246\/revisions\/14745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}