The field of solidification has evolved from metallurgical alchemy to a predictive science over the past century. Our particular focus is on metals and their alloys, whose thermophysical properties tend to differ distinctively from that of organic systems. Rapid advances in modeling efforts and real-time experiments have yielded a wealth of new and quantitative information across relevant length-…
You’ve probably heard that every snowflake is different. Each snowflake’s unique pattern comes from the process by which water changes from a liquid to a solid phase. A snowflake is an example of a dendrite, which is a branched or tree-like structure. Dendrites form in all kinds of minerals as they change phases from liquids to solids, creating unique patterns. Dendrites also form in metals as th…
