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.

Scientific Tuesdays: Turn Styrofoam into pseudo-plastic

The demonstration of dissolving Styrofoam into acetone is one that we do in the summer ASM workshops, typically selling the demonstration by counting how many Styrofoam peanuts you can crush into a film canister, having hidden a small amount of acetone in the canister before the beginning of the demonstration.

At the end of the demonstration, however, we always end up with an amount of goopy, dissolved Styrofoam mess. The presenter in this video uses the term pseudo-plastic for what is left at the end when the goopy mess hardens. I'm a little curious as to why the pseudo comes into play, but that may have to do with my lack of understanding of exactly what plastic means.

Anybody want to clarify for me?

Macedonians (Geeks) created cement three centuries before the Romans

"The Greeks are hoping that tourists will flock to see a building that is second only in significant to the Parthenon in Athens." Yeah, but I'm thinking that the Parthenon has a better PR department.

The title certainly suggests more about cement than the video actually delivers - with the only mention of the cement coming in at 0:27 and lasting about ten seconds.

Investment Casting (Lost Wax) Process

The lost wax casting process is an impressive thing to watch and one that can be replicated - admittedly in a far simpler version - in the classroom. No, you probably would't be making anything quite as complicated as shown in this video, but having students make and carve a simple piece of jewelry - a ring, for example - is very much achievable.

Swimming and walking gel

I really don't know how to characterize this video. Yes, there's a clear material there - 'magnetic particles embedded in a polymer', but it's not quite like anything I've seen before.

Admittedly, though, I could probably watch the 'snakes...made from magnetic gel' on a loop for hours.

Machine creates aluminum helmet - incredible

The concept is pretty simple: carve a block of aluminum into a shape. The execution, however, is nearly mesmerizing as the machine sends aluminum shavings flying with computerized precision.

There are quite a few steps skipped, however, and I would love to see the entire process in a single time-lapse video. I would also like to know how close to 100% recycling the manufacturers are with the cast-off aluminum shavings. I would hope pretty close.

How CD's are made

The production of some of our materials is absolutely masterful to watch. Here the production of a compact disc is followed from start to finish, largely taking place in a clean room. I'll readily admit that I had no clue whatsoever what went into the making of the cd's that I've been playing for years.

Now, if only we could get a video explaining all the steps that go into the making of an mp3 file. That I'd totally watch.