When a magnetic material is bombarded with short pulses of laser light, it loses its magnetism within femtoseconds (10 –15 seconds). The spin, or angular momentum, of the electrons in the material ...

In an introductory physics course, there are three big ideas. There is the work-energy principle, the momentum principle and then the angular momentum principle. I'll skip the work-energy principle ...

Introduction You might have seen figure skaters spinning around quickly and then tucking their arms to spin faster—or opening them to spin more slowly. This happens, thanks to a physics concept known ...

Spintronics is an emerging field that leverages the spin, or the intrinsic angular momentum, of electrons. By harnessing this quantum-relativistic property, researchers aim to develop devices that ...

When a magnetic material like nickel is zapped with an incredibly short laser pulse, it loses its magnetism almost instantly within femtoseconds, or a millionth of a billionth of a second. But physics ...

Photons can have half-integer values of angular momentum when they are confined to fewer than three dimensions. That is the conclusion of physicists in Ireland, who have revived an experiment first ...

Optical vortices are currently one of the most intensively studied topics in optics. These light beams, which carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), have been successfully utilized in the visible and ...

When you shine a flashlight into a glass of water, the beam bends. That simple observation, familiar since ancient times, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. I'm teaching introductory Newtonian mechanics again this term, and as ...