Sunday, May 22, 2016

Mitch Anthamatten Explains a Shape-Memory Cycle Involving Strain Induced Crystallization



Wait, a shape memory polymer?

There's a bunch of good connections here to what we teach in our material science course.

  • The polymer switches from being largely amorphous to largely crystalline on addition of strain.
  • The addition of heat energy then causes the polymer to shift back to amorphism.
  • The phase change happens around body temperature, like the stints we talk about.
  • We have a solid-state phase change.
  • At 0:55, the professor says the energy is 'enough to melt those crystals.' I'm way less knowledgeable and more a neophyte about all this than he is, but that sounds wrong to me. I don't think of a crystalline solid changing to an amorphous solid as 'melting.'
All that in less than two minutes time...

That's better than watching the Kentucky Derby.

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