Materials’ light tricks may soon extend to doing math
Metamaterials could provide faster pattern recognition
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/gb_meta-math.png?fit=860%2C460&ssl=1)
LIGHT MATH A new simulation shows that a light wave (red squiggle, left) entering into a specially designed structure (cube) can be transformed into the original light wave’s derivative (right), a common computation in calculus.
A. Silva/Univ. of Pennsylvania