[Robotgroup] Cool NASA News - Not transparent aluminum, but transparent steel?

[john at cozmicfunk.com]

Even before this,
Star Trek had Transparent aluminum! Did anyone see ST4 the voyage home? 
In the film they went back in time to get two humpback whales to bring 
to the future. They needed thick Plexiglas to make the whale containers 
for the Bird of prey. So they traded the molecular composition of 
Transparent aluminum (used to make the Enterprise windows in the 23rd 
century) to the guy who owned the plastic company. I think the windows 
were mentioned in a Next Gen episode at some point.
JPF

LHudson wrote:
> Hey, has anyone read Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy series?  It's considered a must-read if you're a SW fan but mostly it's full of dialog and syntax that stinks worse than Episode II.  
>    
>   Anyway, my point is that throughout the novels you will encounter one of the most spine-curdlingly irritating words ever made up and that word is "Transparisteel".  And now some Michigan dork has gone and invented it.  
>
> Ed Xavier Gonzalez <ohlaser at swbell.net> wrote:
>   
>   
>> * Clay Nanosheets and Polymer Create Steel-Strength Plastic
>>
>> STEEL-STRENGTH PLASTIC
>> University of Michigan researchers have created a composite plastic that's as
>> strong as steel but lighter and transparent. The composite plastic is made of
>> layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble, glue-like polymer. UM 
>> engineering
>> professor Nicholas Kotov and others have solved a problem that has confounded
>> engineers and scientists for decades: individual nano-size building blocks 
>> such
>> as nanotubes, nanosheets, and nanorods are ultrastrong, but larger materials
>> made out of bonded nano-size building blocks were comparatively weak.
>>
>> The UM researchers created the composite plastic with a robotic machine that
>> builds materials one nanoscale layer after another. In this experiment, the
>> machine's arm held a piece of glass about the size of a stick of gum on 
>> which it
>> built the new material. The arm dipped the glass into the glue-like polymer
>> solution and then into a liquid that was a dispersion of clay nanosheets. It
>> took 300 layers of each of the polymer and the nanosheets to create a piece of
>> this material as thick as a piece of plastic wrap.
>>
>> The polymer used in the experiment, polyvinyl alcohol, was as important as the
>> layer-by-layer assembly process. The structure of the "nanoglue" and the clay
>> nanosheets allowed the layers to form cooperative hydrogen bonds, causing "the
>> Velcro effect." If such bonds are broken, they can easily reform in a new 
>> place.
>> The composite plastic could be used in microelectromechanical devices,
>> microfluids, biomedical sensors and valves, and unmanned aircraft.
>>
>> Find out more at: http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20071018A2
>>
>> Copyright (c) 2007 Associated Business Publications Intl.
>>     
>
>
>
> Ed Xavier Gonzalez
> Oak Hill Laser
> ohlaser at swbell.net
> (512) 288-5243
>
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>
> L. Scott Hudson
>    
>   If I were certain that the World would end tomorrow, I would plant a tree...
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