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 -- ...

Researchers at MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab have recently developed an adaptable material that reacts in response to changes in heat. Known as Heat-Active Auxetics, the material functions in a similar ...

Imagine you wake up one morning burning to make the great physicist Max Planck's face out of copper. (Just go with it.) Sure, you could sculpt it, but there's a better way. Cut a flat copper sheet ...

Currently the uses for auxetics are limited, and in those applications they are probably not knowingly used for the auxetic effect itself. Examples include pyrolytic graphite for thermal protection in ...

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?

Imagine pulling on the long ends of a rectangular piece of rubber. It should become narrower and thinner. But what if, instead, it got wider and fatter? Now, push in on those same ends. What if the ...

Most materials get thinner when stretched. Take a rubber band, stretch it along its length, and it will shrink in the other two directions, getting narrower and thinner as you pull. But there are ...

Most materials get thinner when stretched, but “auxetics” do the opposite and get thicker. Helen Gleeson describes her group’s discovery of a material that is auxetic at the molecular level, which ...

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 ...

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.