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Seaplane
A seaplane is an aircraft designed to take off and land (correctly, though less commonly termed, "alight") upon water. There are two types of seaplane: the floatplane and the flying boat. A floatplane has slender pontoons mounted under the fuselage. Two floats are common, but many float planes of World War II had a single float under the main fuselage and two small floats on the wings. Only the "floats" of a floatplane normally come into contact with water. The fuselage remains above water. Some small land aircraft can be modified to become float planes. In a flying boat, the main source of buoyancy is the fuselage, which acts much like a ship's hull in the water. Most flying boats have small floats mounted on their wings to keep them stable. Seaplanes can only take off and land on water with little or no wave action and, like other aircraft, have trouble in extreme weather.
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Matter & Energy News
January 30, 2026
Jan. 30, 2026 Researchers have found a way to make ordinary aluminum tubes float indefinitely, even when submerged for long periods or punched full of holes. By engineering the metal’s surface to repel water, the tubes trap air inside and refuse to sink, even ...
Jan. 29, 2026 Order doesn’t always form perfectly—and those imperfections can be surprisingly powerful. In materials like liquid crystals, tiny “defects” emerge when symmetry breaks, shaping everything ...
Jan. 29, 2026 Scientists have created a device that captures carbon dioxide and transforms it into a useful chemical in a single step. The new electrode works with realistic exhaust gases rather than requiring purified CO2. It converts the captured gas into ...
Jan. 26, 2026 Physicists have discovered that hidden magnetic order plays a key role in the pseudogap, a puzzling state of matter that appears just before certain materials become superconductors. Using an ultra-cold quantum simulator, the team found that even ...
Jan. 26, 2026 Researchers have demonstrated that quantum entanglement can link atoms across space to improve measurement accuracy. By splitting an entangled group of atoms into separate clouds, they were able to measure electromagnetic fields more precisely than ...
Jan. 25, 2026 Researchers have developed a technique that allows them to carve complex three dimensional nanodevices directly from single crystals. To demonstrate its power, they sculpted microscopic helices from a magnetic material and found that the structures ...
Jan. 21, 2026 A new building material developed by engineers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute could change how the world builds. Made using an enzyme that turns carbon dioxide into solid minerals, the material cures in hours and locks away carbon instead of ...
Jan. 19, 2026 Physicists have unveiled a new way to simulate a mysterious form of dark matter that can collide with itself but not with normal matter. This self-interacting dark matter may trigger a dramatic collapse inside dark matter halos, heating and ...
Jan. 19, 2026 As global energy demand surges—driven by AI-hungry data centers, advanced manufacturing, and electrified transportation—researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have unveiled a breakthrough that could help squeeze far more power ...
Jan. 18, 2026 Solid-state batteries could store more energy and charge faster than today’s batteries, but they tend to crack and fail over time. Stanford researchers found that a nanoscale silver treatment can greatly strengthen the battery’s ceramic core. ...
Jan. 17, 2026 Engineers have created a device that generates incredibly tiny, earthquake-like vibrations on a microchip—and it could transform future electronics. Using a new kind of “phonon laser,” the team ...
Jan. 15, 2026 Foams were once thought to behave like glass, with bubbles frozen in place at the microscopic level. But new simulations reveal that foam bubbles are always shifting, even while the foam keeps its overall shape. Remarkably, this restless motion ...
Latest Headlines
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Jan. 26, 2026 For years, scientists noticed that magnetic fields could improve steel, but no one knew exactly why. New simulations reveal that magnetism changes how iron atoms behave, making it harder for carbon ...
Jan. 26, 2026 When materials become just one atom thick, melting no longer follows the familiar rules. Instead of jumping straight from solid to liquid, an unusual in-between state emerges, where atomic positions ...
Jan. 24, 2026 Scientists are finding new ways to replace expensive, scarce platinum catalysts with something far more abundant: tungsten carbide. By carefully controlling how tungsten carbide’s atoms are ...
Jan. 23, 2026 Chemists at UCLA are showing that some of organic chemistry’s most famous “rules” aren’t as unbreakable as once thought. By creating bizarre, ...
Jan. 22, 2026 A long-standing law of thermodynamics turns out to have a loophole at the smallest scales. Researchers have shown that quantum engines made of ...
Jan. 22, 2026 Scientists are learning how to temporarily reshape materials by nudging their internal quantum rhythms instead of blasting them with extreme lasers. By harnessing excitons, short-lived energy pairs ...
Jan. 21, 2026 When quantum spins interact, they can produce collective behaviors that defy long-standing expectations. Researchers have now shown that the Kondo effect behaves very differently depending on spin ...
Jan. 15, 2026 Physicists have long relied on the idea that electrons behave like tiny particles zipping through materials, even though quantum physics says their exact position is fundamentally uncertain. Now, ...
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Jan. 13, 2026 At extreme pressures and temperatures, water becomes superionic — a solid that behaves partly like a liquid and conducts electricity. This unusual form is believed to shape the magnetic fields of ...