Listen: ‘Active matter’ could give robots and clothes more life

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Active matter could revolutionize everything from clothing to robots, but what is it?

“Normal passive matter like a book lying on your table won’t open the pages by itself and turn the pages. It’s passive and sits there unless an external force acts on it,” says Seth Fraden, a physicist from the Materials Research 糖心视频 and Engineering Center at Brandeis University.

“With active matter, you can take the internal energy and have that be converted into mechanical energy that can lead to self-propulsion,” he says.

In this episode of , Fraden explains what active matter is and how it can be used to create machines and materials that behave like living organisms.

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