Scientists at NIST are helping to create recipe for new lightweight materials used for aircraft, cars, and windmills using tiny nanoparticles. Team took idea from 7-decade-old math paper by Shizuo Kakutani, who suggested a way of modeling particle shapes in material property calculations. Team first created virtual nanoparticles that have same physical shape as real-world particles they want to analyze, and then calculated relevant properties using ZENO software package developed partly at NIST.