Auxetics defy common sense, widening when stretched and narrowing when compressed. NIST researchers have now made the process of using them much easier. Such common-sense-defying materials do exist.

The study of auxetic materials and mechanical metamaterials has ushered in a new era in materials science, where structural design and geometry enable properties beyond those of conventional materials ...

Most of us think we have a pretty solid grasp on basic physics, and one of the assumptions we've come to form is that any material gets thinner as it's stretched. It makes sense, since the same amount ...

Regardless of whether it is strained or compressed, the new material always expands. Copyright: Thomas Heine et al. Researchers have discovered a two-dimensional ...

Like most materials, an elastic band gets thinner when it is stretched. But some materials behave in the opposite way—they grow thicker when stretched and thinner when compressed. These ...

Most materials bulge out when you squeeze them, pushing the energy outside. But that's not always what you want -- wouldn't it sometimes be better for them to collapse and hold the energy inside?

When everyday materials are pulled, they stretch or elongate in the direction of the pull and become narrower in cross-section. We can also observe this property in two-dimensional textiles. Auxetic ...

While examining the capabilities of Liquid Crystal Elastomers, scientists have discovered the first synthetic material that becomes thicker -- at the molecular level -- as it is stretched. Scientists ...

The risk of injury in professional sport has been a central feature in recent debates about how well protected our stars are. Only recently, Argentine football player Emanuel Ortega died of a fatal ...

Auxetics defy common sense, widening when stretched and narrowing when compressed. Researchers have now made the process of using them much easier, paving the way for new types of auxetic products -- ...

Such common-sense-defying materials do exist. They’re called auxetics, and they have a raft of unique properties that make them well-suited for sneaker insoles, bomb-resilient buildings, car bumpers ...