On April 8th 1982 Dr Shechtman fired a beam of electrons at a slice of aluminium-manganese alloy, in order to understand its crystal structure.

ECONOMIST: The 2011 Nobel prizes

One effect of the beam is to polarise the cloud of electrons surrounding each rubidium nucleus, meaning that part of the atom becomes a negatively charged pole, and part a positively charged pole.

ECONOMIST: Quantum computers