Material Marvels

In this segment of Material Marvels, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez describes how simple devices like cell phones can be powered by heat using thermoelectric materials which convert heat to electricity.

In this segment of Material Marvels, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez demonstrates how materials behave strangely when they are nanosize—about 1/100,000 the thickness of your hair.

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, discusses how a layer of carbon that is one atom thick, called graphene, will revolutionize our lives. Discovered by scientists that won the Nobel prize, graphene can be found in everyday pencils, is incredibly strong and super-conductive and will make blazingly fast computers and video games a reality.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to quasicrystals. But what are they? Dr. Ainissa Ramirez guides us into the strange world where atoms arrange themselves in forbidden ways and create materials with weird properties.

In this short video, Yale engineer, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, shows how sandwiches of silicon (in solar cells) can create energy from sunlight and help curb our dependence on oil.

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez (@blkgrlphd), talks about shape memory alloys. These "metals with a memory" are used in space, in robots and even in your mouth!

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, demonstrates the heat absorption properties of the space shuttle's ceramic tiles.