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![New Scientist Default Image](https://www.brainit.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Your-finger-can-feel-the-change-of-a-single-atom.jpg)
A swap of a single atom can change how a smooth surface feels
Ralf Hiemisch/Getty Images/fStop
The human fingertip can distinguish between materials that have minuscule chemical differences – even a substitution as small as a single atom.
Generally, what we feel with our fingers are physical bumps in a material’s surface structure. Charles Dhong at the University of Delaware and his colleagues set out to find whether it would be possible to feel a chemical difference in which the internal molecular structures of two materials slightly vary but their surfaces are equally smooth.
They did this by taking a …
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