It's not a tough answer at the most basic of levels. We've taken multiple materials - each of which accomplishes something useful for the overall chip package - and have fused them together in ways that make them nearly impossible to separate again and recycle.
Now, how are we trying to recycle them in spite of all the steps we've taken to make sure the materials couldn't easily separate?
Step one is to find a way to separate the un-separateable through heat, pressure, and high pH.
We've seen NightHawkInLight around these parts before - or at least we've heard his voice.
In this video, he posits a few simple rules for building with cardboard...
Direction matters - cardboard is not equally strong in all directions
Layer for strength - laminate/glue multiple layers together for a strong material
Glue then trim - glue the layers together before trimming them to size
Wheat paste is awesome - It's an environmentally friendly glue - which he shows you how to make.
Reinforce edges - Trim and fold over the cardboard facing to reinforce the edges
Mixed materials - Small amounts of wood can be added for extra, targeted strength
Face jointed reinforcement - again with the wood reinforcement
Surface hardening - more wheat paste but as sizing not as glue
Securing joints - use toothpicks to hold pieces in place until the wheat paste sets
Utilize tensile strength - cardboard is strong in tension; use its strength
Templates save time - if you're making dozens of the same piece, use a template
Splice sheets perfectly - He shows a way to thin both sheets and splice two together.
Fold sheets cleanly - sort of like the splicing
Papercrete fiber recycling - Hey, a composite made of composites! This one is wheat paste and paper pieces - not ice.
Panel jointery - Again, more tips for joining pieces together
Improved jointery - seriously, more joining tips
Then he gets to how to waterproof the cardboard. One of the methods he suggests involves shellac - which I've blogged about before and is very much not vegan-friendly - with beeswax. The other is hot glue, beeswax, and mineral oil and looks to be way gloopier.
The last part of the video explores ways to make the waterproof coating UV-resistant, something that I never would have thought to be concerned with.
Honestly, this video is way more detailed about cardboard building than I ever would have guessed could be done.
Now I just need to go back in time and get grandpa to bring home some boxes from his Inland Container job in the 70's.
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.
That's going to be a very contemporarily pretty airport.
I don't get the idea of an airport where people will just come to hang out as a community space because I'm thinking that's going to freak out a whole bunch of security folks, but in the long run that's not a materials question, so I'll leave that aside for now.
The mass timber movement seems to go back to basics, using bonded wood from supposedly sustainable forests to build gorgeous buildings. Here's to hoping that it works.
Ferrock is created from waste steel dust (which would normally be thrown out) and silica from ground up glass, which when poured and upon reaction with carbon dioxide creates iron carbonate which binds carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the Ferrock.
Roughly 95% of the Ferrock is made from recycled materials, Ferrock is both stronger and more flexible than normal Portland cement, allowing it to be used in highly active environments where there is a consideration for seismic activity.
At 28 days, the strength of Ferrock concrete exceeds that of conventional concrete by 13.5 percent for compressive strength, 20 percent for split tensile strength, and 18 percent for flexural strength.
From the University of Arizona...
"This all started from an accidental discovery in a lab, which is actually the way it usually goes," [Ferrock inventory David] Stone says. "That was back in 2002, and I included as much as I knew in my doctoral dissertation. But the work goes on. It has taken years to get just a basic understanding of the chemistry involved. But this shouldn’t be surprising, since scientists are still trying to figure out Portland cement and they’ve had 200 years.
"I am into this for the long haul. Time is on our side, since in this era of global warming unsustainable processes like cement manufacture will have to give way to greener alternatives."
As always, I am guardedly hopeful but skeptical until I start seeing Ferrock showing up in buildings.
"If there were a floor covering Olympics, marble would probably get gold. Hardwood would get silver. Bronze would maybe go to tile — and linoleum wouldn’t even make the trials. Arguably the most maligned flooring there is, these days linoleum is considered (at best) something you rip out to get to the real floor. But it wasn’t always that way."
That's the description from the YouTube description as Vox wrote and is shown below the video. I'm not sure I can do much better than that.
Linoleum sucks. That's the general, modern impression of linoleum, but there's a lot more to the fascinating history and construction of the composite flooring known colloquially as linoleum.
There's really nothing wrong with linoleum, but it's just way out of fashion. It does require some waxing, but according to this video, it's way more environmentally friendly than vinyl - which I have throughout my entire home, natch.
Oh, that shot at 0:09 makes me think that the red, gray, and white flooring at Princeton High School is linoleum.
And the YouTube description includes links to learn more about the history and modern revival of linoleum.
Wind energy might be the solution - or at least part of the solution - to our energy problems. We absolutely need to stop burning things (methane, oil, coal, wood, trash, retired Beanie Babies) to make energy. That is not in dispute.
One of the things that is in dispute, however, is how to deal with the waste from retired wind turbine blades. From the same article, "[b]lade waste is projected to reach 2.2 million tons in the US by 2050. Globally, the figure could be around 43 million tons by 2050." The blades are, as a CNN article writes, "made from fiberglass bound together with epoxy resin, a material so strong it is incredibly difficult and expensive to break down."
Recycling the themoset resin is challenging, though a company named Vesta "has been working on in partnership with Aarhus University, the Danish Technological Institute and US-based epoxy company Olin, uses a liquid chemical solution to break down the blade into epoxy fragments and fibers. The epoxy resin is then sent to Olin which can process it into 'virgin-grade' epoxy"
There are other possible solutions mentioned in the article - pyrolitic separation of the resin and fibers allowing both to be reused, chopping the composite blades into fragments to then mix into cement, and...well...not much else.
A C&EN article explores the same issue and adds in an option of repurposing the blades rather than recycling them, showing an image of a playground made of decommissioned blades in the Netherlands and saying that they have also been turned into bus shelters and other public structures. The article also reports that there are companies exploring making the blades out of more easily recycled materials, though little detail of what those materials could be are provided as the materials and processes are still being devloped.
I love the John Wick series. It's ridiculous and phenomenally unreal that the main character would survive even the remotest bit of the damage done to him throughout the series of films.
With that being said, I guess a bulletproof dress suit similar to John Wick's is possible. I say that because this video is about the process of making just such a suit.
There is a lot of firing of guns - all on a controlled, safety-checked gun range, at least - in the video. The high quality stuff to me is the initial exploration of how they should do the testing to see which materials are bulletproof and the minimum of those materials that they can use. The try to cheap out on the testing methods initially but come to realize that the testing standards are written because the standards describe the ways that actually work. I appreciate that.
I also appreciate the discussion of composite materials even though the sheer-thickening fluids from my previous post didn't seem to provide any advantages, which is a little disappointing.
The first 7:53 of this video is all about orbital mechanics - which is interesting, I'll grantcha, but isn't the focus of this blog.
If orbital mechanics is your jam, go play some Kerbel and get back when you reach an expolanet.
We're here to learn about material science, and that's where the video takes a big turn at about 7:55, first exploring the carbon foam composite of the solar shield, itself, and the ceramic, reflective paint on its sun-side.
Then - at 9:15 - we get into the solar probe cup and its measurements of the solar wind. The big issue there is that the cup can't hide behind that carbon-carbon composite shield. It has to survive nakedly in the solar wind at 1400 degrees C which sort of limits the acceptable materials. The conductive mesh is made of acid-etched tungsten, and the wires leading to and from the mesh are a niobium alloy called niobium C-103 (89% Nb, 10% Hf, and 1% Ti) with sapphire bead insulation...you know, as is tradition.
Space is frickin' wild, man.
And that doesn't even get into how we tested those materials - a whole other journey that's covered after 13:55 in the video.
This is another overly long video that is filled with a massive amount of science in all sorts of disciplines: physics, material science, chemistry, engineering, mechanics.
The video sees the Real Engineering host, Brian McManus, visit SpinLaunch's centrifuge being built to launch satellites into space primarily via kinetic energy rather than through rocket fuel combustion...which sounds totally bonkers but might work out.
One of the main technologies here involves a carbon fiber-reinforced polymer tether. At 3:00 that concept is explored with a laminated carbon fiber reinforcement mock-up of the thickness that they need the tether to be to hold the millions of pounds of force that would be necessary.
Then - 8:00 - they look at the need to spin up that tether in a vacuum chamber so that it doesn't melt the carbon fiber from the friction due to air resistance. They also describe how truly low pressure vacuum chamber pumps work and why the SpinLaunch people don't need a vacuum chamber with quite that low a pressure. The idea of outgassing from the metallic parts - 10:25 - was amazing to me. It makes sense to me that there would be small amounts of oxygen gas 'dissolved' in any steel parts, but I had certainly never thought about it before. It's an equilibrium problem, I guess, as oxygen is removed from the atmosphere around the part.
At 16:20 they take a look at the challenges of opening a low pressure chamber at near vacuum to the atmospheric pressure outside without destroying the chamber inside when the air rushes in. They've used a pairing of mylar layers that are broken through and two incredibly quick closing doors.
From 21:30 they explain how they address and minimize vibrations - especially once the payload is let go, leaving a highly unbalanced weight on the arm.
The next section - from 26:45 - they look into the ballistic coefficient of the projectile and why a heavier vehicle might be better for their launch process - something that is very well against the traditional method of launch's goals. With rockets, lighter is better. With the SpinLaunch, heavier and denser is somewhat better because it allows the projectile to gain more momentum without corresponding drag and heating due to friction with the lower atmosphere.
The whole process is fascinating, and I'm hopeful that it turns out to be feasible because I would love to see a full scale SpinLaunch facility built and functioning - for the science and novelty if for nothing else.
For me, the big payoffs in this video come from the high speed videography at 2:30 and again at 5:20. Seeing the composite hockey stick flex and store up energy then spring forward even ahead of the player's hand when that stored energy is release is just gorgeous and shows the advantages of composite materials in sports as compared to older, wooden sticks.
Plus, I'm down for just about any video that Destin posts.
I like that the music choice for the video. The beat is a little propulsive but isn't overpowering, and the groove over top of the beat is smooth enough that it can play for nearly seven minutes without becoming repetitive or annoying.
By the by, I came upon this video because my wife and I were watching a video about the making of an apple tart in which the youtuber referred to his process as being kind of like making plywood. He's correct in that he had a rotary cutter slice off lengths of apple - as the rotary cutter slices off lengths of the tree - and then reassembles the apply lengths as the tree slides are reassembled (though he went for a round tart rather than the flat plywood.)
It's interesting to see how many people were needed for making plywood in 1954 and how few are needed in modern manufacturing.
I feel bad for this youtuber having to broadcast to us from some sort of white void with bad lighting or white balance without understanding how low quality his image is compared to the quality of the images that he's sharing 'behind' him. And I don't know why he won't make eye contact with me. He keeps looking at something above and in front of me that I can't see.
Sorry for the snarkiness.
I've been watching a lot of very professionally made YouTube videos recently, and it's easy to see how much better those look than this more amateurishly produced videos, but I will admit that this guy gives a great explanation of why epoxy coated rebar is used (corrosion prevention), the problems with it (the epoxy rubs off unless the rebar is handled very gently before sealing it in concrete leading to pitting corrosion and debonding), and pros and cons of possible solutions (high costs due to scale production and lack of building code acceptance).
It's easy to think that simple solutions (just paint the rebar) won't lead to secondary problems (the paint rubbing off).
(Oh, and respect to BadLandsKid who had the top comment on this video when I accessed it most recently, "Very galvanizing topic. While it’s not set in stone, it reinforced my views on rebar.")
Like is it now less likely for a lost Lego brick to find the bottom of my foot in the dark at midnight?
No? Then it doesn't change everything.
I like the idea of using old tires to supplement the gravel road bed to keep things in place before paving over them. It seems like a great use for old tires and certainly keeps them out of landfills.
But calling them an 'industrial-strength geosynthetic confinement' technology seems a little jargonish to me.
I think we're all aware that we use too much stuff.
Admittedly, the wood that we're using probably isn't the worst of that stuff. If we could use a little less wood and maybe reuse some of the wood that we are using, it might be a little better for our planet, though.
This video shows the process through which ChopValue turns used chopsticks - primarily around Vancouver - into floor tiles and tabletops. It's actually fascinating.
It's a composite stone made of compressed seashells with carbonic acid leaching out calcium out of the shells to fuse them together into stone.
The above video, from the US National Park Service, explains the material of the walls of Castillo de San Marcos and how its porosity was both a weakness (it needs to be plastered to waterproof it) and a strength (the walls could 'absorb' cannon balls fired at it in an attack.)
The second video - below - explores the preservation efforts necessary to maintain the coquina walls.
No, I have never wondered why pushing harder on a pencil while I'm writing makes the line darker.
I just assumed that there were more layers of graphite being left behind.
Oh, wait, that's it?
Wow. that's not a great opening question, Dimitar.
Here Dimitar discusses the benefits of adding graphene to concrete to make the concrete even stronger. Then Professor Cracuin steps in and suggests other uses of graphene - electronics integrated into fabrics or even our skin - and graphene-like materials (?). She mentions a material of two layers of graphene sandwiched around iron chloride (a combination she calls graphexeter - after the University of Exeter where she researches) to make incredibly flexible, durable, conductive displays - possibly even 'tatoo'ed onto the skin or integrated into contact lenses.
As an aside, I think this is the first TED talk I've seen that switches presenters partway through.
One of my students in chemistry recently picked up my copy of Materials in Sports Equipment (vol 1)by Jenkins (speaking of which, three questions...one, does anybody know if a Vol 2 ever came out? And did you know an updated edition just came out in May 2019? Does anybody know how different the updated version is?)
He skimmed the first few pages and came to me with questions about the energy transfer in pole vaulting. That sent me looking for videos about the energy transfer in - and the material science of - pole vaulting.
The first video I found - the above one - goes through the energy transfers spectacularly, explaining via stick figure drawings just how the energy changes forms in the course of the run up and eventual vault itself.
That, then, sent me looking some more for videos about the materials of the vault pole.
I couldn't find a corny joke either at the beginning or end of the How It's Made video, so that was a little disappointing. But I did notice that some of the How It's Made footage was in the LSU video up top.
...but I will say the production value on the "How It's Made" video is higher than this less fancy video showing how Gill makes pole vaults.
Then I started to go further down the rabbit hole and found just how steam is involved in the production of vault poles, something that clearly the American Boiler Manufacturer Association must care about deeply.
And I'm really curious about the Essx pole video which seems to show some materials above and beyond fiberglass - possibly carbon fiber and what seems to look like saran wrap (?). I kind of wish their video wasn't entirely wordless.
...and because I figure somebody came here to see this, I'll include a compilation of pole vault breaks. Heads up, though, that nobody in this video gets seriously injured.
