Harvard's New Programmable Liquid Shifts Its Properties on Demand

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Harvard's New Programmable Liquid Shifts Its Properties on Demand

We’re surrounded by ingenious substances: a menu of metal alloys that can wrap up leftovers or skin rockets, paints in any color imaginable, and ever-morphing digital displays. Virtually all of these exploit the natural properties of the underlying materials. But an emerging class of materials is more versatile, even programmable. Known as metamaterials, these substances are meticulously engineered such that their structural makeup—as opposed to…