concepts
5 articles, most recently updated first
The one-letter difference that trips everyone up. Adsorption (with a D) is a SURFACE phenomenon — molecules are enriched at an interface, outside the solid structure. Absorption (w…
Geometric blackness is the principle of trapping light with shape rather than pigment: angled cavities catch incoming light in repeated reflections so a surface absorbs almost ever…
Kleptothermy is a thermoregulatory strategy in which an animal harvests the metabolic heat produced by another organism — the literal 'joule heist' that gives this KB its name. Mec…
Thermophotovoltaics (TPV) converts heat directly into electricity: a hot emitter radiates a black-body spectrum onto bandgap-matched photovoltaic cells. It is the inverse of this K…
Density-based topology optimization grows cooling geometry from physics instead of designing it: solving Navier–Stokes plus thermal convection over 20–330 million degrees of freedo…