The materials in our world are rarely pure. Our steels are alloys. Our polymers contain dyes and plasticizers. And apparently our food packaging - like chip bags - are composed of nearly a dozen different polymer and aluminum foil layers glued together.
Trying to get those materials apart again to recycle them is currently all but impossible to recycle.
If only those layers could be separated again...
In our summer camp (more info here, natch) we have an awesome demonstration that heats an iron wire via a variac that demonstrates the solid state phase transition from BCC iron (at room temp) to FCC iron (at higher temperatures).
This video heats wires of various metals at - I think - constant voltages - and observes a few interesting things:
Found on reddit...
We were talking about the expandable, polyurethane foam in class after doing the lab, and I wanted to hunt down some uses of the foams outside the classroom. I figured if I'm looking for them, some of you might be interested in them, too.
If you have any other good videos of uses of expandable foam, please link to them in the comments.
More after the jump...
I'm far from an expert when it comes to firing ceramics. I've been using the same programs on the same kilns in my classroom at Princeton HS for almost twenty years now, and as I've learned from the actual ceramics teacher in my school, that likely means my elements and thermocouples aren't anywhere near optimal working condition anymore. She offered to replace the elements for me, and I think I'm going to take her up on that this year.
I've also learned that I should probably be using some pyrometric cones to confirm some of the temperatures that I think we're getting to according to the thermocouples and the digital controllers on the various kilns.
Who knew?
Apparently ceramicists did...
I can admit to having not seen the movie Tower Heist. I'm okay with that fact since the reviews generally weren't all that positive.
To give you the relevant summary, a bad Alan Alda has stolen money from lots of people including the employees of the building in which he lives via a ponzi scheme. The employees break into his apartment to steal back the money only to find the safe empty. Luckily, they happen to scratch the paint job on vintage Ferrari in the apartment and find that it's made of solid gold.
Bad science ensues.
In the above clip, nebbishy Matthew Broderick does some quick math and states that the car weighs 2000 lb at $1872 per ounce of gold which makes for about $45 million.
The math doesn't even check out as 2000 lb x 16oz/lb x $1872/oz = $59.9 million...even allowing the 'give or take ten million,' that's lazily off.
But the issue here is that a 2000lb car made of steel, rubber, and glass wouldn't translate to the same weight in gold since steel, rubber, and glass have different densities than gold.
2000 lb of gold would make for a cube roughly 14 inches on a side because gold is way more dense than steel, rubber, or glass. If the Ferrari were actually made of gold, it wouldn't be 2000 lb; it would be more like more than - according to one article I found - 10,000 lb...because gold is very dense.
Which would lead to so many problems in the subsequent scenes when the team tries to lower the Ferrari down on a rope, swing it into an apartment being renovated, and then has to pull the Ferrari back up the roof where a single person unhooks it and drops it into the rooftop pool.
Oh, spoilers...
None of that would be possible with a solid gold Ferrari weighing in excess of five tons.
Then, in the touching end scene, each of the building's employees gets a chunk of the solid gold mailed to them - a grill, a wheel, a bumper - all of which are easily delivered by a friendly UPS-type man...and each of which would weight hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
Shipping would be pricey.
I've been waiting to post this video until the construction was fully completed.
Nate From the Internet has been building a 'life-sized' Lego castle for nearly a year now. I'm pretty sure it's set 6080 - Kings Castle from 1984.
He's had to figure out how to 3d print the individual bricks which meant designing digital files for the initial 1x1 bricks and also for interlocking pieces to make each of the bricks, plates, and tiles that were too large to fit into a single 3d printer. Along the way he ran into problems with the interlocking mechanism, the fit of the pieces together, the strength of the plates on which he would hopefully be able to walk, how to 3d print the big ugly wall panels, and lots more.
The above video shows the assembly of the final castle, but Nate has a full playlist of the work in progress videos. They're all worth checking out, and I'm half tempted to look into going to Utah in August to see the final product.
See, it's chucklesome because this clearly is a ridiculous way for glass to have been invented, but it's a funny way.
