The life and achievements of chemist Stephanie Kwolek, inventor of Kevlar

Stephanie Kwolek absolutely belongs in the inventors hall of fame, in the women's hall of fame, on the American Chemical Society's website, and on lots of other lists of honorees.

Stephanie Kwolek, you see, invented Kevlar at DuPont in 1965.

Making a BULLETPROOF John Wick Suit in Real Life!

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 Myriad Uses of Stronger than Steel Kevlar

Kevlar is pretty amazing stuff, stronger and lighter than a steel strand of equivalent diameter would be...unable to stop a knife but fully capable of stopping a bullet.

Compound Interest is a British blog through which Andy Brunning, a chemistry teacher with a flair for graphic design, posts outstanding chemistry-themed infographics.

Making Stuff Stronger: Demonstration Clip

The Making Stuff series is an outstanding exploration of materials engineering and science with four episodes: Smaller, Stronger, Smarter, and Cleaner. In the series David Pogue plays the inquisitive and often comedic and corny host who looks at a number of materials being made at the cutting edge of materials science.

Here he takes a look at Kevlar, providing an excellent graphic showing the polymer's structure, and then suggesting a possible new use for a thick, Kevlar cable.