The hashtag makes clear that this was a reference to the show Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which isn't something I watch regularly. It seems that in last week's episode, a particular magic sound ...

A plucked guitar string can vibrate for seconds before falling silent. A playground swing, emptied of its passenger, will gradually come to rest. These are what physicists call "damped harmonic ...

When a guitar string is plucked or a playground swing is set in motion, the movement gradually fades away. Physicists call these “damped harmonic oscillators,” and Newton’s laws do a fine job of ...

Imagine plucking a guitar string. It vibrates, the sound lingers, and then fades away as the energy drains into the air. Now bring this scene down to the scale of an atom. Can an atom vibrate in the ...

A Vermont research team has cracked a 90-year-old puzzle, creating a quantum version of the damped harmonic oscillator. By reformulating Lamb’s classical model, they showed how atomic vibrations can ...

University of Vermont professor Dennis Clougherty (right) and his student Nam Dinh wondered if there are systems in the atomic scale that behave like the vibrating motion of a guitar string in the ...