can "fundamental" properties of matter be artificially changed?

(1) Can *fundamental* properties of substances be changed by external artificial means?

Part of my thesis as a grad student in chemical engineering was predicting the temperature profile of a rod with convective & radiative losses. One end was embedded in a furnace and the rest was exposed to the air. My model was subsequently used by another grad student whose project was to verify that the thermal conductivity of the metal (rod) could be changed by applying ultrasonics to it. (I suspect this would facilitate improvements in some manufacturing process of the company that was sponsoring the research grant.) They already qualitatively knew this happened but needed to quantify and tabulate the results.

Along the same lines, I seem to recall reading that certain EM fields could even change the decay rate of a radioactive substance. If that is true, then could it apply to a decay that produced an anti-particle? Artificially increase the decay rate and use the anti-particles immediately in an annihilation reaction to generate heat/energy (i.e., better than a battery or fuel cell; a pseudo "Element-115"?).

What other so-called "fundamental" properties can be changed/altered via external means?

(2) Although we err by being human and are quick to criticize things we don't understand, it appears there was a sound "method to their madness" of the scientists, politicians, military planners and engineers involved in the Manhattan Project. Check out Carey Sublette's detailed "Chronology of Nuclear Weapons" at www.stealthskater.com... .

I'm feeling sort of under the weather today, so this won't be a sparkling start to any discussion... but... did the other researcher investigate WHY the changes occurred? Changes in crystalline structure??

That's important, because it seems that what you're talking about is changes in structure that lead to changes in behavior... but NOT having a single atom behave in a totally different way (say, an anion suddenly behaving as a cation.)

Were you speaking english there?

Seriously though. If applying a specialized field to an object to change its conductivity, I would categorize that as a fundamental property of the object.

Take water for example. Heat it up and at 1 atm of pressure and water turns to a gas at 100C. Increase the pressure, and it has to go above 100C to turn to a gas. Lower the pressure, and it does not need to get to 100C to turn to a gas.

To me that would be a fundamental property of water. But the outside force causes it to change states at different temps. Or are you defining "fundamental" in a more strict manor?

[Edited on 10/30/03 by crayon]