This video needs a massive - Don't Try This at Home - disclaimer.
That's in spite of the fact that the entire video is telling you how you can exactly do that - melt metal at home.
The procedure is interesting...
Materials Science and Technology - Teachers Handbook by phschemguy on Scribd
Things occasionally disappear from Scribd, so I'm also going to provide a Google Drive link to the above document here (and a link to the document directly on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) website). Admittedly, it's a large pdf (350 or so pages), so you may want to download it rather than view it via preview.
This document is - to at least some extent - the forerunner of the ASM summer workshops, with many of our activities having been initially developed (or at least compiled) in the Materials Science and Technology Teachers Handbook from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory operated by Battelle. I'll copy the abstract for the handbook in its entirety (in case link rot takes it away)...
The Materials Science and Technology (MST) Handbook was developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, Washington, under support from the U.S. Department of Energy. Many individuals have been involved in writing and reviewing materials for this project since it began at Richland High School in 1986, including contributions from educators at the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory, Central Washington University, the University of Washington, teachers from Northwest Schools, and science and education personnel at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Support for its development was also provided by the U.S. Department of Education. This introductory course combines the academic disciplines of chemistry, physics, and engineering to create a materials science and technology curriculum. The course covers the fundamentals of ceramics, glass, metals, polymers and composites. Designed to appeal to a broad range of students, the course combines hands-on activities, demonstrations and long term student project descriptions. The basic philosophy of the course is for students to observe, experiment, record, question, seek additional information, and, through creative and insightful thinking, solve problems related to materials science and technology. The MST Teacher Handbook contains a course description, philosophy, student learning objectives, and instructional approach and processes. Science and technology teachers can collaborate to build the course from their own interests, strengths, and experience while incorporating existing school and community resources. The course is intended to meet local educational requirements for technology, vocational and science education.
The handbook is a phenomenal document, opening with an introduction to materials science, continuing with an explanation of their goals for the project and the course, discussing how to set up a classroom environment that is conducive to student exploration, then covering an entire year's worth of classroom activities.
Admittedly, the project was begun in 1986, published in 1994, and 'cleared for release in 2008.'
Some of the language and activities are dated, and the materials sources aren't remotely current.
But this is the grandfather of the materials science course at Princeton High School, the forerunner of the ASM summer camps, this is the granddaddy of us all.
Thanks, ants...thants.
In the summer of 2023, our field trip from the Salt Lake City ASM summer teacher camp was to WNDR / Checkerspot.
When the trip was initially described to me, I thought we were going to see how snowboards and skis are made. I'm not a winter sport guy, so I figured it could be interesting but not necessarily my scene.
When we got there, though, I found that WNDR - the winter sports equipment maker and retailer - wasn't the real business. The real business was Checkerspot, a materials company that was producing polymer raw materials from microalgae as a replacement for petroleum sourcing.
That company needed some way to demonstrate the utility of their materials, so they found a consumer-focused industry with high margins and a strong environmental conscience among its consumers. In the Salt Lake City area, skiing and snowboarding made sense for them because the final products - the snowboards and skis themselves - are high users of polymers in their composite materials, and the people who buy tend to be willing to spend a little more to buy environmentally friendly products.
The tour was outstanding, and I highly recommend getting to see their process if you're ever out in Salt Lake City. You can see some of their facility in this next video.
We'll start with the video debrief of the driver with the armored vehicle manufacturer after the fact so we're all aware that things worked out fine for the people you'll see in the next two videos which are the original footage - first one inside the vehicle, second one a dashcam pointed out of the video.
We've had impressive videos of bulletproof, composite glass before, but this is a really impressive application of that material in its designed use. And, of course, the host sits in the car at the very end while one of his coworkers fires another two shots at him. Nuts, man...
And the final video is from an American morning show providing some context on the interior video that was making its rounds on social media at the time.
Heck of a first day on the job for the guy in the passenger seat.
Barnaby Dixon is an impressive puppeteer that I first heard about probably ten years ago. If you haven't checked out some of his work, do yourself a favor and spend a few minutes there first.
In this instructional video, Barnaby explains how he uses a thermoplastic polymer - a polymer that becomes flexible when it's heated above some temperature but is rigid below that same temperature. It's a great example of the polymer's glass transition phase change. Because polymers are mixtures, they don't necessarily have definite melting temperatures as pure substances like elements or compounds do. Instead they have ranges of temperatures during which they aren't quite solid or liquid but are flexible and moldable - think of hot glass being shapeable but not liquid.
I have some of this at school. It used to be available from Educational Innovations. That's where I bought it, but they sadly don't carry it anymore. Of course, just about anything is available at Amazon if you search for pcl moldeable plastic.
This video covers ground that is more attractively covered in this other unit cell video.
...but this video also goes through the specific math required to calculate the packing factor - the percent of occupied space - for each of the crystal structures.
Plus it has a Pokemon analogy - which the computer animation video doesn't have.
To paraphrase Corey Petersman, an AP chemistry and material science student during our first year of teaching matsci at Princeton, "vaporeon, witches!"
I've never been to the Pacific Northwest - not further north than the Redwoods National and State Parks in Northern California, anyway.
Might have to get to the Tacoma/Seattle area to check out the Museum of Glass.
This video is an un-narrated walking tour of that museum with occasional annotations in the top corner of the video. Not a ton of information - certainly no science - just glances at pretty glass.
