We present a simple, cost-effective, yet instructive spectrometer for use in undergraduate instructional laboratory courses. Deliberate design choices are made to enhance the learning experience provided by the setup, where every component is accessible to students, allowing them to fully understand the function of each individual item.  

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align.

The magnetic properties of materials usually originate from exchange interactions between their electrons, but researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have now discovered a new type of magnetism that disobeys this rule. Known as kinetic magnetism, and previously only predicted theoretically, the new mechanism occurs in a regime where the strength of electron exchange interactions vanishes.  

ETH Zurich researchers have detected a new type of magnetism in an artificially produced material. The material becomes ferromagnetic through minimization of the kinetic energy of its electrons.