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

[Gray Mack]

yes, but can you make whale tanks out of it?

Speaking of technology, looks like theres a new name
for flux capacitor: linear transformer driver (LTD), 
and its making some breakthroughs in fusion power
generation.
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/rapid-fire-pulse.html


--- LHudson <lhudson73 at yahoo.com> 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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