The 19th-century German toy pieces, made with quartz sand, chalk and linseed oil, allowed kids to create realistic structures ...

Researchers from the University of Delaware and Washington University in St. Louis have figured out how to train synthetic polymer molecules to behave--to literally “self-assemble” --and form into ...

Which magnetic building blocks are best? Parents are giving their babies, kids and toddlers more STEM toys to educate them and help them succeed in a global market. Sets of magnetic building blocks ...

UPTON, NY-Taking child's play with building blocks to a whole new level-the nanometer scale-scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have constructed 3D ...

Mathematicians are creating their own version of the periodic table that will provide a vast directory of all the possible shapes in the universe across three, four and five dimensions, linking shapes ...

Self-assembly of individual building blocks into highly ordered structures, analogous to spontaneous growth of crystals from atoms, is a promising approach to realize the collective properties of ...

Taking child's play with building blocks to a whole new level-the nanometer scale-scientists have constructed 3D "superlattice" multicomponent nanoparticle arrays where the arrangement of particles is ...