In addition to helping scientists understand how natural soft structures such as flower petals and embryos take shape, the technique could be used to make polymer actuators. These devices move in ...

Researchers have developed a polymer structure inspired by a classic “Chinese lantern” that can change into more than a dozen curved, three-dimensional shapes when it is compressed or twisted. These ...

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a mathematical framework that can turn any sheet of material into any prescribed shape, ...

New research shows that microscale robots can be made from shape shifting 2D sheets. Itai Cohen and Itay Griniasty of Cornell University in the US have developed a mathematical technique for encoding ...

Experimental and theoretical physicists and a polymer scientist have teamed up to use much thinner sheets than before to achieve seeking to encapsulate droplets of one fluid within another. Thinner, ...

"Sheets of food transform into 3-D shapes when dunked in water." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2017 / 05 / 170525100233.htm (accessed October 22, 2025).

Sheets of plastic that fold into tiny pyramids, boxes and spheres when water is added have been created by French researchers. They think the technique could one day be used to mass-produce the ...

‘INTELLIGENT’ temperature-controlling bed sheets and furniture which changes shape and COLOUR are among the incredible innovations which will be commonplace in the homes of the future, it has emerged.