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

[LHudson]

Try reading the trilogy ... he crams the word "Transparisteel" into just about every opening paragraph for each chapter.  You know, to establish the scene.  Every single new location has giant towers of Transparisteel rising from the ground. 
   
  Anyway
  
Kevin Blanchard <kevin at kevinblanchard.com> wrote:
  I don't know. I kind of like the ring of "Transparisteel" ;-)

On Thu, October 25, 2007 9:55 am, 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 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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L. Scott Hudson
   
  If I were certain that the World would end tomorrow, I would plant a tree...

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