For as long as he could remember, Brenden Ortiz wanted to do only one thing. “My childhood dream was to be a scientist. All I wanted to do was tinker in a lab like a pure scientist,” Ortiz said.
Nine engineers from ORNL visited 10 elementary and middle school classrooms in three school districts during National Engineers Week, Feb.
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.