Friday, December 11, 2009

Entropy Alone Can Create Complex Crystals from Simple Shapes; Tetrahedra Packing Record Broken

Entropy is a measure of the number of ways the components of a system can be arranged. While often linked to disorder, entropy can also cause objects to order. The pyramid shape central to this research is the tetrahedron---a three-dimensional, four-faced, triangular polyhedron that turns up in nanotechnology and biology.

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