Researchers from Syracuse University, Iowa State University, Harvard University and Technische Universitt in Munich have recently clarified a scientific mystery that has held many in the field baffled for years.

Mark Bowick, an SU physics professor and a leader of the research, explained that the group has determined how charged particles arrange themselves on spherical surfaces, a task that in theory is geometrically impossible.

“On a flat surface, particles like to form a pattern with the six nearest neighbors,” Bowick said. “But mathematically, you cannot take a flat surface and wrap it around a sphere. You cannot have a perfect fit.”

The researchers found that as the surface curves, the particles develop what Bowick calls “unavoidable irregularities.”

The particles do not form a perfect triangular lattice and they have seven neighbors instead of six, Bowick said. These irregular formations tend to arrange themselves in lines, and the team calls them “scars,” Bowick added.

“Nature is trying to be as organized as it can be, but a flat surface couldn’t be perfectly rounded,” said Alan Middleton, an associate professor of physics. “There are some places where it can’t be perfect.”

Middleton compared the geometric formations of the particles on a surface to a bee’s honeycomb, explaining that if a person tried to bend a honeycomb around a ball the edges would not line up unless extra pentagons were added.

“We also showed that if you have a spherical surface, the bigger it gets, the more defects you have,” Bowick said.

A report of the researchers’ findings was published in the March 14 issue of Science, and they were also featured in Scientific American’s Online News of the Day and in a National Science Foundation press release, Bowick said.

“It’s hard to get in Science,” he said. “It’s finally public, and it’s been well received.”

Phil Borer, an SU chemistry professor, believes that the publication in Science benefits the university as well as the researchers.

“These folks have been finally getting the recognition they deserve,” Borer said. “Science is pretty important beyond the immediate community that did the work.”

The physicists worked for four years on this research after Bowick and another researcher, David Nelson of Harvard University, published a paper on the theory of the problem in 1999, Bowick said.

“We thought it would be nice to experimentally prove this,” Bowick said.

They plan to continue their research to determine other details, such as how the “scars” form and other geometries of the particles. This new information will be valuable to several other scientific and technological fields, and it also will benefit many applications to everyday matters, such as medicine and the development of new synthetic materials.

“We predict we can affect materials’ properties,” Bowick said. “We’re basically doing chemistry on a larger scale.”

Published on March 19, 2003 at 12:00 pm