Nanofiber Breakthrough Creates Supertough, Strong Material
- Thread starter JonB
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Right!Formica Archonis said:
All they've been missing is a light, strong enough, and tough enough material and we could have (relatively) effortless liftoff capability. If this stuff is tough enough... a working skyhook changes everything.
"in which a high voltage is applied [...] until a continuous jet of liquid ejects" ... context is everything
OT: very cool, I hope we can see this soon applied and maybe move away from environmentally dangerous pratices like aluminium mining and maybe make the wasteful process of unibody design less attractive to manufacturers.
OT: very cool, I hope we can see this soon applied and maybe move away from environmentally dangerous pratices like aluminium mining and maybe make the wasteful process of unibody design less attractive to manufacturers.
Am I the only person who craved some of these after seeing the image on this article?
OT: Seems pretty cool. I wonder how much it costs to manufacture though?
OT: Seems pretty cool. I wonder how much it costs to manufacture though?
- Feb 7, 2011
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The problem with that idea is that even if a bullet can't pass through something, it still imparts a huge amount of force on impact. There are already soft body armors that exist, but while they're very good at stopping bullets, they aren't very good at protecting people from the blunt force from the bullet, because when the bullet hits the soft surface most of the bullet's energy is absorbed in a very small area of the vest, and therefore still goes directly into the body, very often causing broken bones and internal bleeding. That's why when people wear soft body armor they almost always wear what's known as a "trauma plate" (which is a rectangular plate made of metal or ceramic) over the soft body armor, in order to reduce the blunt force trauma caused by the bullet hitting their body armor.MorganL4 said:Yay, shameless plug at the end
But on a more serious note... This actually seems really cool... could they make it into a cloth? If so that could be great for the military, having bullet proof sleeves and pants, and not just something that will protect the torso. Fingers crossed on that front...
So if you imagine bullet proof clothing made out of nanofibers, people would still be heavily injured by the bullets. Sure, the bullets wouldn't actually enter the person's body, but all of the force of the bullet would still be imparted to that body causing heavy blunt force trauma, breaking bones and causing internal bleeding. To have effective body armor you need the bullet to hit a hard surface to more evenly distribute the force.
Basically the use of these kinds of nano-fibers in creating body armor wouldn't be creating body armor that has more coverage, but rather creating body armor that is lighter and easier to move in.
Heh...
As I saw commented on a recent story about nanowire-equipped solar cells (supposedly) doing a similar thing for the renewable energy scene... "take a word, add 'nano' to it, bask in the ensuing nerd-love and rake in the VC cash, even though it might not actually offer any benefit at all..."
As per GeneralBob - yeah... that's pretty cool, especially the electrojaculation or whatever they actually called it. But call me when they finally find a practical use for the stuff. Otherwise it may as well just be more buckyballs / carbon nanotubes. The former have been around for the better part of a half century and still aren't used for anything even vaguely mainstream (or money-spinning, which can be about as important; if a thing isn't making money for *someone*, chances are it's not actually that widely useful regardless of how "revolutionary" it may be in research terms).
As I saw commented on a recent story about nanowire-equipped solar cells (supposedly) doing a similar thing for the renewable energy scene... "take a word, add 'nano' to it, bask in the ensuing nerd-love and rake in the VC cash, even though it might not actually offer any benefit at all..."
As per GeneralBob - yeah... that's pretty cool, especially the electrojaculation or whatever they actually called it. But call me when they finally find a practical use for the stuff. Otherwise it may as well just be more buckyballs / carbon nanotubes. The former have been around for the better part of a half century and still aren't used for anything even vaguely mainstream (or money-spinning, which can be about as important; if a thing isn't making money for *someone*, chances are it's not actually that widely useful regardless of how "revolutionary" it may be in research terms).
So because something doesn't have practical applications right now we should abandon it and consider it a waste that we ever made it? By that logic we wouldn't even have iron except for what we've collected from meteors. Lots of these discoveries wont ever see a practical use, but imagine if we were cynical about silicon, the purification process there is really quite complex. We might just as well have skipped aluminium since that's a complex process and there's a lot of pollution.GeneralBob said:
Learning new methods can be as important as the product itself.
So in a few years time, when someone asks how all this stuff works, we will have an excuse to say
Science, I love ya baby.
Very interesting. An innovation in construction material might seem trivial on the onset but it is on their foundation that civilization rests. Now if they can only make something like this be extremely light we can really change everything.
Asbestos.GeneralBob said:
