Even when eating a simple bitterball, a burnt tongue can reveal that a large amount of heat is stored in the filling, while the crispy crust feels a lot cooler. Even though the entire bitterball has been subjected to the same heat treatment in the deep fryer or oven, there is more heat in the … Continue reading Heat storage in materials
X-ray diffraction (XRD) is an analysis technique to determine the crystal structure of crystalline materials. You do this by bombarding the material with X-rays. This is radiation with a wavelength of about 1 Angstrom (10-10 m), in the same order of magnitude as the distance between atoms in a crystal. Where a normal mirror reflects … Continue reading Structure determination with X-ray diffraction
Subtle or robust? Wine is an interplay of the type of grapes, the soil, the climate, the time of picking and the craftmanship of winemaking. During the winemaking process, the many components of the grapes are transferred into the wine, and yeasts take care of the conversion of sugars from the grapes into ethanol. As … Continue reading Materials for red wine
Bring nature into your home with wood! With knots – places where a side branch grew on the tree – and grains as an expression of the natural look, and the warm appearance of the material. Wood is a natural composite material, with cellulose fibres embedded in a matrix of lignin and hemicellulose – all … Continue reading Wood, a sustainable natural composite material
Just like in the ‘good old’ desktop computers, the heart of today’s multimedia devices such as notebooks, tablets and smartphones is made up of microprocessors. Such a microprocessor, also known as computer chip, processes data based on instructions. A microprocessor consists of a huge number of tiny switches called transistors, each of which has essentially … Continue reading Computer chips – how are they made?
About five years ago the Dutch book Kennismaken met materialen saw the light of day. A book that has found its way into large and small companies, educational and research institutes, universities, bookstores and libraries, as a reference work but also as a (business) gift for many interested parties. The described examples in the world … Continue reading Book Meet materials has been published – in English!
Just outside the earth’s atmosphere, the sun shines with a power of 1367 watts on a square meter of surface facing the sun. This sunlight radiates continuously from the sun to the earth. On a cloudless day in summer, 1000 watts per square meter arrive at the earth’s surface in the Netherlands – the earth’s … Continue reading Solar energy: from sunlight to electricity
Nuclear power plants for energy generation use the solid ceramic material uranium oxide UO2 as “fuel”. If the uranium isotope 235U in the nuclear reactor is bombarded with slow neutrons, this produces an unstable uranium isotope 236U that very quickly decomposes into large nuclei with a mass number around 142 and around 92, such as … Continue reading Nuclear energy
In an internal combustion engine in your car, the fuel – petrol, diesel, LPG – reacts directly with oxygen. The larger volume of combustion gases pushes a piston back and forth, and a crankshaft converts this back-and-forth movement into a rotating movement for the car wheels. Chemical energy from the fuel is converted into useful … Continue reading Electrochemistry of the fuel cell
The end of the teenage years of the 21st century is in sight. A good moment to look back at the past decades, which were characterised by a multitude and variety of technological developments. Without having the illusion of being complete, here are some highlights from this period. Consider microtechnology for ICT, but also new … Continue reading Technological developments over the last 50 years
