Material Properties 101

The narrator's Irish accent, tho...

The introduction to the video says there are six terms that he's hoping we understand by the end of the video...

• stiff
• strong
• ductile
• brittle
• tough
• hard

Man, if all of my students understood those terms by the end of the semester, I'd be thrilled.

We get coverage of a tensile test to explain stress, strain, and the stress-strain curve (along with many of its aspects - yield strength, ultimate strength, Young's modulus, fracture, tensile strength, max allowable load/stress, toughness).

He then covers hardness briefly, explaining how the Rockwell hardness test works.

It's not perfect because it left me wanting to know more...but maybe that's the point.

The entire video is six minutes long, and the last forty-five seconds or so is an advertisement for the video's sponsor - annoying but still school appropriate, thankfully.

Polymer Ambassadors & POLYED

Just last week I was at NSTA's regional conference in Columbus, OH, and I came back with a few things I thought I should mention.

First, go to an NSTA conference. They're outstanding. Admittedly, the regional conferences are smaller versions of the glorious, massive, national confernces, but that's still a pretty outstanding version. Yes, the ASM folks tend to present, but I'm all good with seeing them and continue to learn new things every time. Do yourself a favor and avoid most of the exhibitor workshops because they tend to be extended sales pitches (unless you already have a relationship with the company and know that they don't do as much selling as they do teaching.) And, check out the ASM folks (Debbie Goodwin, Andy Nydam, Scott Spoller, Caryn Jackson, Sherri Rukes) while you're there because their presentations are contistently outstanding. On the personal side of things, I can say that it was a regional NSTA presentation from Debbie and Andy that got me involved with the material science program.

Secondly, at her presentation (lotions, potions, and scrubs), Sherri mentioned two resources. The first is the Polymer Ambassadors website (available but currently undergoing a much needed redesign behind the scenes) with its excellent activity sheets and links to the PolyEd Award, a grant to fund and reward polymer education in the schools. The current application information lists only an award for middle and high school teachers who teach about polymers in the classroom, but Sherri mentioned that this year's awards will now have separate competitions for elementary, middle, and high school teachers.

The grants pay $1000 per teacher - directly to the teacher - for, I guess, supplies to keep teaching about polymers, though the payment comes to the teacher not to the school district. Plus the winner gets funds paid to go to a national NSTA conference. The application process isn't very involved, and Sherri has said that in a number of years they give out a half dozen awards with fewer than a half dozen applicants.

That means you're likely to win the award if you apply.

So, what's stopping you?

You teach about polymers, right?

Whether it's two-part Eurocast and shrinky dinks or bioplastics, that's teaching about polymers.

Apply!

The Composition of US Coins

Thanks, Compound Interest.

And thanks, ACS for working with Andy Brunning (of the aforementioned Compound Interest) to produce this great, visual guide to the metals in US coinage.

That non-pure copper penny can make for some great lab experiments.

Then again, so can the pure copper.

Aluminum - the material that changed the world

Trigger warning - the narrator here has an Irish accent (I think) which could lead some folks to being distracted because it's that cool.

Oh, and they misspell and mispronounce the element being discussed.

Of course, the aluminum being discussed is a stunning material, lightweight, self-protective, and - if heat treated correctly (as described at 1:40) incredibly strong.

Then, at 2:30 or so, the video gets into age hardening of aluminum, and the video becomes way better.

We get images of FCC at 3:00...slip planes at 3:25...alloys at 3:45 (with great imaging of the atoms)...

This is an outstanding video here.

Thanks to Debbie (and her Philly campers) for sending this my way.

Glass explosion at 343,000 FPS! - The Slow Mo Guys

38 degrees out in July in Texas? That doesn't seem all that hot to me.

Of course, I'm assuming that they're in Fahrenheit because I'm American. If the Slow Mo Guys are resolutely not going to use specific units, I'm going to assume whatever units I want.

This video, by the way, is brilliant.

The guys take kitchen-grade pyrex (really tempered soda lime glass not the lab-grade borosilicate glass) measuring cups and subject them to drastic thermal shock - propane torch then ice cold water. The real money shot happens at 5:38.

Then there's an outstanding comparison of the speed of glass shattering to human reaction time at 7:15. The glass shatters - spoiler alert - way faster than an eyelid can blink shut.

Then, at 8:30 we get an explanation of thermal shock and what's happening with the expansion/contraction dichotomy with the glass.

The Hidden World of Chocolate

That doesn't look like anything I would want to eat. No matter how tempered it is, I'm not tempted.

The post where I found this is from PopSci, but the original video is from Johns Hopkins. It's kind of interesting to see chocolate under the scanning electron microscope, especially since chocolate has a whole bunch of crystal structures.

"Material science literally is studying stuff. Anything that you can feel, anything that you can use, we can make it stronger. We can make it lighter."

Yeah, that's about right.

3D technology recreates 2,000-year-old monument

The video above cuts off a bit short of the full video found on the BBC's website.

It's fascinating here to see that an original monument has been recreated - or copied, really - in dispute of its destruction by ISIS (Daesh). 'Recreated' seems a little off to me because the original would have been made of stone blocks held together by mortar, but the new version is much larger blocks carved (CNC'ed really) to look like the smaller blocks are held together by metal rods through the center of each block.

Clearly, this isn't the original, but it's an interesting recreation.

Old CDs recycled into valuable plastic

When I first saw this article about recycling CDs (polycarbonate polymers), I was hopeful that we would get a new lab for material science. The above diagram, however, isn't exactly a step-by-step procedure.

And the full text of the article isn't available without a subscription.

I do appreciate the attempts to further our recycling options for plastics, however, as I find myself throwing out a lot of CDs because they can't easily be recycled in single-stream recycling programs.

Of course, there are other options than throwing the CDs out...

ASM Teacher Camps - 2016

In case you were wondering just where the summer ASM teacher camps for material science would be in 2016, there's a map.

I know there is because I just made it.

You should apply for one of the camps by visiting the ASM Education Foundation teacher camp webpage.

My students are taking a test, and I can kind of watch them to make sure they're not cheating while I do this kind of stuff.

Oops, probably should check on Emily.

Vantablack: The Darkest Material Ever Made

That's dark.

That's initial image of the vantablack looks entirely like a special effect.



Vantablack is the lest light-reflective material (coating, really) ever. The video suggests its usefulness inside telescopes, which makes sense. I'm curious, however, where else it could be found useful.

Apparently vantablack is also superhydrophobic.

the Pykrete Dome - worlds biggest icedome - a movie by Bart van Overbeeke - Structural Ice

That's a big igloo.

Check out the ice/wood pulp structure up there. There aren't many details in the video ('fiber-reinforced ice', sure but which fiber?) , but there are more over on the accompanying website.

And the construction video (below) look like a load of fun.

A forging series

This forging series comes to us from Terry McInerney of Impact Forge in Columbus, IN.

Terry spoke at our ASM teacher material camp at the University of Indianapolis as part of the Forging Foundation's outreach through the camps. Terry spoke to the advantages of forged parts and brought with him a number of finished products. I asked Terry if it would be possible to have a full forging series to show my students (and campers) the process from start (the billet, the cylinder on the left above) through to the finished product (the far right) and the flash (the 'waste' that is 'cut' off in the final forging step - the ring and punched center on the farthest right).

Terry was kind enough to send me two sets of the series - one for my classroom and one to travel with (though the 40+ pound series is a bit daunting for anywhere that requires a flight.)

Terry had the following to say about this series...

In each box is a complete progression of a Ford Explorer wheel hub. One billet, preform, blocker, finished part, perimeter flash, and pierced slug. These parts are forged at 2300 degrees f in a 2500 ton mechanical press, then trimmed and pierced in a 300 ton trimming press. The material is 1045V, quite normal for hubs. The [V] represents vanadium added [for grain refinement] during the heat treatment process. A finished hub is normall around 38 to 43 RC. The parts in the condition you see are microalloy material and have been rapidly air quenched on a special cooling conveyor to reach the desired hardness. They are then shipped to the customer for machining and assembly.

Big, big, big thanks to Terry McInerney and to Impact Forge for the donation to our program.

Man Slams World's Tallest Glass Bridge With a Sledgehammer

<br /> I'm not interested in walking on that bridge.

It doesn't matter how many of the identical panels that British reporters try to destroy. It only matter that I might actually look downward, in which case I would be messing up those beautiful, glass panels because I'd wet m'self.

Desperate fear of heights, doncha know?

The clouds might help, but the video below makes me think they really wouldn't help too much.

Kinetics are important

See, it's true because oxidation is just something losing electrons...and burning involves something oxidizing by combining with oxygen.

It's funny, see?

It's also relevant to material science for when we do the iron wire demo and see that oxidation happens more quickly at high temperatures.

Source - XKCD

This is pure snow! It's everywhere! Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?

So, the gag and some background.

XKCD is a webcomic. It's geeky and typically pretty outstanding. Sometimes, however, it's even better than that. Ever now and again Randall Munroe, XKCD's creator, expands the boundaries of the stories that he wants to tell, pushing beyond the limits of the standard three- or four-panel webcomic format.

In comic 1608, a glimpse of which is shown above, Randall published what looked like a single panel, coin-gathering game with the lead character on a hoverboard. If the player, however, ignored the 'rules' and headed outside of the game board, the world became much more interesting, including references to dozens of other XKCD strips, Star Wars movies, Lord of the Rings, and lots, lots more.

Somewhere to the left of the origin area was a Washington Monument, 'climeable' with your avatar's hoverboard. At the top of the monument was the scene shown above, with two characters climbing the Monument with conventional ropes and one of them commenting that the top of the Monument is solid aluminum, and they're going to be rich.

See, I get that because of my material science time and learning. I've posted about the Washington Monument's cap before, and the aluminum cap certainly would've been enough aluminum to make any man rich - when it was first installed.

I, as always, recommend XKCD in its entirety (though there are occasional NSFW moments). There's also a parallel website called ExplainXKCD.com for when you (or I) don't get the gags. You can also get a full-comic image of 1608 on ExplainXKCD, too.

The post title is also a gag for those of you in the know.

Boeing says it created lightest metal ever

Apparently strong, lightweight materials matter when building airplanes?

Either that or the Boeing engineers just want to dominate their kids' egg drop challenges at school.

From a cnn.com article about the microlattice...

The microlattice weighs only about one tenth as much as carbon fiber, and is actually slightly lighter than air itself, said Bill Carter, the director of the Sensors and Materials Laboratory at HRL.

It will likely first be used on space rockets that Boeing plans to build in about five years, and it should make its way into commercial planes about five years after that, said Carter. He said the cost of manufacturing will have to come down a little more before it is economically feasible to use on cars.

ALON® Optical Ceramic - An advanced transparent polycrystalline material

I teach, admittedly, a simplified version of material science. That's partially because my students aren't quite ready for more advanced versions but also because I'm not always aware of just how much more there is to material science.

For example, when we study ceramics and glasses, one of the things I explain is that glass is amorphous, and one indicator of that is the fact that it's transparent to visible light. Ceramics, on the other hand, are generally crystalline, and that's why they're opaque.

It turns out things are much more subtle than that. Check out Surmet's ALON (aluminum oxynitride.) From the wikipedia article...

AlON is optically transparent (≥80%) in the near-ultraviolet, visible and midwave-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is 4 times harder than fused silica glass, 85% as hard as sapphire, and nearly 15% harder than magnesium aluminate spinel. Since it has a cubic spinel structure, it can be fabricated to transparent windows, plates, domes, rods, tubes and other forms using conventional ceramic powder processing techniques. AlON is the hardest polycrystalline transparent ceramic available commercially. Combination of optical and mechanical properties makes this material a leading candidate for lightweight high-performance transparent armor applications such as bulletproof and blast-resistant windows and for many military infrared optics. AlON-based armor has been shown to stop multiple armor-piercing projectiles of up to 50 cal. It is commercially available in sizes as big as 18x35-inch monolithic windows.

There is so much to learn...for my students and for me, too.

How Plastic Bottles are Recycled into Polyester

There's a whole lot of labor involved in recycling.

And it looks like it's largely done by hand in nations with lower worker payments and laxer labor laws than the US.

But then again, what else are we going to do with all our old water bottles?

Hydraulic Press | Prince Rupert Drops | Remake | Safe Tails

When it comes to hydraulic press YouTube channels, I'm more of a Hydraulic Press Channel guy than I am a PressTube guy. I'm particularly fond of the destruction of a hockey puck and of the vicious clay creatures that are stopped from wanton murder at the end of each video.

But I am willing to watch the derivative PressTube when they come up with something creative to destroy. In today's video, the PressTube folks destroy a Prince Rupert drop...or two...or ten. And, in the process, they also make some pretty big dents in a chunk of lead.

AISI/SAE Steel - numbering system

I spend a decent amount of my summer talking to industry folks. Sometimes they're materials engineers, sometimes metallurgists, sometimes polymer engineers, forgers, welders, failure engineers.

No matter what they're titles, they're typically far more knowledgeable about industrial materials than I am. They throw around all sorts of acronyms that I have to take note of and look up later.

Sometimes I save reference materials here just so I can look them up later.

Today's reference material is about the AISI (American Iron and Steel Institute) / SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) steel numbering system. See, the wikipedia article - while thorough - is a little too thorough for me.

Instead, I like the simplicity of the Engineering Toolbox's reference chart...

10XX	Carbon steels	Plain carbon, Mn 1.00% max
11XX		Resulfurized free machining
12XX		Resulfurized / rephosphorized free machining
15XX		Plain carbon, Mn 1.00-1.65%
13XX	Manganese steel	Mn 1.75%
23XX	Nickel steels	Ni 3.50%
25XX		Ni 5.00%
31XX	Nickel-chromium steels	Ni 1.25%, Cr 0.65-0.80%
32XX		Ni 1.75%, Cr 1.07%
33XX		Ni 3.50%, Cr 1.50-1.57%
34XX		Ni 3.00%, Cr 0.77%
40XX	Molybdenum steels	Mo 0.20-0.25%
44XX		Mo 0.40-0.52%
41XX	Chromium-molybdenum steels	Cr 0.50-0.95%, Mo 0.12-0.30%
43XX	Nickel-chromium-molybdenum steels	Ni 1.82%, Cr 0.50-0.80%, Mo 0.25%
47XX		Ni 1.05%, Cr 0.45%, Mo 0.20-0.35%
46XX	Nickel-molybdenum steels	Ni 0.85-1.82%, Mo 0.20-0.25%
48XX		Ni 3.50%, Mo 0.25%
50XX	Chromium steels	Cr 0.27-0.65%
51XX		Cr 0.80-1.05%
50XXX		Cr 0.50%, C 1.00% min
51XXX		Cr 1.02%, C 1.00% min
52XXX		Cr 1.45%, C 1.00% min
61XX	Chromium-vanadium steels	Cr 0.60-0.95%, V 0.10-0.15%
72XX	Tungsten-chromium steels	W 1.75%, Cr 0.75%
81XX	Nickel-chromium-molybdenum steels	Ni .30%, Cr 0.40%, Mo 0.12%
86XX		Ni .55%, Cr 0.50%, Mo 0.20%
87XX		Ni .55%, Cr 0.50%, Mo 0.25%
88XX		Ni .55%, Cr 0.50%, Mo 0.35%
92XX	Silicon-manganese steels	Si 1.40-2.00%, Mn 0.65-0.85%, Cr 0-0.65%
93XX	Nickel-chromium-molybdenum steels	Ni 3.25%, Cr 1.20%, Mo 0.12%
94XX		Ni 0.45%, Cr 0.40%, Mo 0.12%
97XX		Ni 0.55%, Cr 0.20%, Mo 0.20%
98XX		Ni 1.00%, Cr 0.80%, Mo 0.25%

...with its couple of examples:

Example AISI/SAE No. 1020

• the first digit indicates that this is plain carbon steel.
• the second digit indicates there are no alloying elements
• the last two digits indicates that the steel contains approximately 0.20 percent carbon
   

Example AISI/SAE No. 4340

• the first two digits indicates a Nickel-Chromium-Molybdenum alloy steel
• the last two digits indicates carbon content roughly 0.4 percent

Ikea plans mushroom-based packaging as eco-friendly replacement for polystyrene

Styrofoam cases?

Air-filled bags?

Starch 'peanuts'?

Mushrooms?

Well, not exactly mushrooms...more like something called mycelium which is certainly mushroom-adjacent. It's certainly a fungus-based product.

And apparently if you grow it just right, let it grow into the right shape, bake it to make sure the final product doesn't grow mushrooms in the process of shipping, you can use mycelium - as produced by a company called Ecovative - to protect your widgets during shipping.

And Ikea ships a whole lot of stuff across the oceans. They're not quite ready to ship entirely in fungus-based packaging, but they're looking into it.

Sand Castle Holds Up A Car! - Mechanically Stabilized Earth

I wouldn't want to build my house on a sand castle foundation, admittedly. In fact, I posted something about the dangers of that before

Reinforced sand, on the other hand, looks like it might be something a little different. Just adding in some fabric - or screening - between layers of packed sand makes for a far stronger product. It's almost like it's a composite.

(It is a composite, by the way, gaining new-found strength from the combination of strengths of the materials comprising the composite.)

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.

Condensation Polymerisation | Chemistry for All | The Fuse School

Great animation for condensation polymerization here, folks.

The standard color codings are used - black=carbon, red=oxygen, blue=nitrogen, white=hydrogen. The animations are simplified to focus on the functional groups. And they show the by-products clearly and cleanly.

I do wish they would have suggested that the by-product could be something other than water (like in our preferred nylon demonstration from summer camp), but I'll happily take a great visual of the by-product first.

And we get applications of a couple of condensation polymers.

Overall, a winning, quick video.

Saltwater Brewery “Edible Six Pack Rings”

Saltwater Brewery "Edible Six Pack Rings" from We Believers on Vimeo.

I watched most of this video, though I will warn you that there are some pretty horrific images of ocean animals being girdled by traditional, plastic six-pack rings. Those, I might've watched out of the corner of my eye while glancing at the NBA playoffs.

The idea of using industrial byproducts - here barley and wheat leftovers - for useful products makes sense environmentally as well as economically. Less waste into the landfill, lower cost of waste handling, fewer environmental hazards for marine life?

Sign me up, folks.

Color: a spectrum of possibilities for your ring

I desperately want a titanium ring, and I'm really curious to get one that's anodized in some gorgeous color(s).

I just can't figure out which ring I want. There are tons of choices.

The titanium, then, can be oxidized to produce gorgeous colors. The process of creating an oxide coating on a metal via application of electrical current is called anodizing.

One of these years I'll get around to trying to do some anodizing myself, but I'm going to have to get a steady supply of titanium before I can use it as a class lab. Titanium's kinda expensive and really, really hard to cut - something that I need to consider, too.

When I do get around to it, though, I'll check back on these instruction pages.

As a warning, there isn't really any color to the oxide layer. It's caused by light wave interference. Check the science out if you really want to know.

If you were thinking of a gift for your favorite material science blogger, I'll need to measure my ring size first, but this one's the current choice.

3D-Printed Ceramics | PopMech

I appreciate the intricacies of 3d printed parts. There are forms that can't be made by casting, carving, forging, or any method other than via 3d printing.

I've seen 3d-printed materials in various polymers, chocolate, sugar, and lots of metals, but 3d-printed ceramics are new to me.

We continue to eek closer and closer to the Star Trek replicator every day.

Solid Gold Lego Han Solo vs Darth Vader - untold Star Wars story

I'm not a Star Wars guy. I am, however, a Lego and molten metal kinda guy. I have a couple of Lego casts in tin via the Lego ice cube trays, but tin is a lot different from gold.

Gold is something to brag about and to throw down in a comparison.

Gold is something else.

If anybody ever wants to thank their favorite material science teacher for all the work he (or she, but definitely he this time) does on his or her favorite material science video blog, a gold Lego figure would be a fine choice.

Might I recommend a gold Benny instead, though?

Non-Newtonian Ball of Concrete

First off, I think that's a ball of cement not concrete, but I'm just saying that because of all the cool stuff I've learned about ceramics and composites in my material science learning.

I'd heard somewhere along the way that cement can - in the right mixtures and proportions - form a non-Newtonian fluid, but I've never played around enough to see what that mixture is.

By the way, in researching this post (seriously, I do research - it's how I learn stuff) I came across what looks to be a mildly scholarly (but still mostly understandable to me) chapter on non-Newtonian fluids  - what they are, how they work, application of them, examples - that I need to read through in more depth. Check it out yourself if you're so inclined.

National Crystal Growing Competition Handbook (pdf)

National Crystal Growing Comp Handbook Eng

The original source is here, but I went ahead and reposted it here.

I'd always heard that in Canada there was a contest for high school students to grow the best/largest single crystals (thank you, Chem13, for introducing me to that one). Admittedly - and offensively, I'm sorry - I would typically follow that up with some repetition of Jim Carrey's "Canada" routine (thanks, Becky Heckman, for introducing me to that one).

Since I've gotten into the material science course and the CuSO4 crystal-growing world myself, however, I've been kind of interested in playing along.

Anybody wanna get something like this started in these here United States of America?

Oil Absorbing Polymer

My students asked me during the height of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill why they weren't using the oil-absorbing polymers that we talked about in class.

Here Steve Spangler tackles just that very issue. Turns out there's a lot more to cleaning up a large oil spill than just some sprinkling...

'A Snowball’s Chance in Hell' - Unimpossible Missions - GE

Admittedly, dunking a snowball in molten metal does seem a little stupid, but if's striking when that snowball doesn't appear to have melted even a little bit after its dip.

Sadly there's no info as to what the ultra-alloy is (other than that it's 'nickel-based'). On the IFLScience article about the video, we learn that the metal can is "just over 3 millimeters (0.11 inches) thick, then lined with 5 centimeters (2 inches) of fibrous alumina-silicate insulation."

There's some more information on GE's website where they highlight this and other parts of their Unimpossible Missions program.

Naica - Return to the Giant Crystal Cave

The famous crystal cave of Naica was first discovered in 2000, and scientists have been trying to study the massive gypsum crystals found there ever since.

National Geographic originally produced a program Deadly Crystal Cave and has now produced a follow-up program titled Return to the Giant Crystal Cave (seen above).

In this version, a mostly new team of scientists continues exploring the cave, finding ways to spend longer times in the cave while exploring to greater depths and testing some of the theories that the first team of scientists developed. There is also a team of spelunkers checking out a possible new cave found off of a newly-drilled air shaft into the mine.

We again get told that the main crystal cave will be allowed to refill and the crystals to begin growing again but without any specifics as to when that might happen.

The Harvard Library That Protects The World's Rarest Colors

Even if we go to the 152-crayon case from Crayola, there are certain colors that we just aren't going to ever get to, and I'm not just talking about blurple.

The chemical composition of colors - maybe pigments would be the better word - turns out to be important in identifying the veracity of recovered artwork. Certain pigments come into and out of fashion over the years, and pigments from paintings of already known provenance can be compared to the paintings of those of unknown provenance.

And there's a museum at Harvard University that keeps samples of more than 2500 historically-important pigments.

Investigators: Boy, 9, injured after glass shower door shatters

That's pretty much what tempered glass is supposed to do right there.

Yes, there may be a quality control issue in that the tempering might be better or worse depending on the production mechanics and controls, but that view of shattering into multiple small pieces is what's supposed to happen with tempered glass.

Ideally, those pieces would be smaller than some of those we see in the video, but that's way better than what untempered glass would cause - a very few large, heavy, sharp glass pieces falling down on the showerers.

The glass has to go somewhere, folks.

Let's be careful out there.

(Source)

World's First Laser Rust Remover

Well that's pretty stunning.

In doing some research about the laser, here's what I've found out...

From MachineDesign.com...

The company explains that the device aims short, 1000-W laser pulses at the rusted piece, producing micro-plasma bursts, along with thermal pressure and shockwaves to sublimate the rust and separate it from the metal without damaging the piece. Material removal is halted when the laser is applied to a clean surface because it only sublimates rust. (Sublimation is the transition from a solid to a gas.)

Costs for low-power units start at $50,000. Power supplies can be worn as a backpack for mobile devices, and roll-out generators are available for stationary models. 

Japanese Scientists Create Glass That's Pretty Much Unbreakable

Image actually not from the story cited but rather from here

Previous attempts to add alumina to glass have failed, because the raw mixture crystalised as soon as it touched any kind of container. By removing the container and mixing the glass in the air instead, this problem was overcome.

I've posted before about this, but the initial article was a bit more academic and written for a journal.

This one is written for a more populist audience, so it's certainly going to be more useful for my students.

ICE SWORD! (Made With Pykrete)

That's a heck of a sword there,

And it's way stronger than it would have been if it were made of just ice.

See, ice is strong in compression but weak in tension. Paper - toilet paper, for example - is the opposite: weak in compression but strong in tension.

Combine them together, and you get a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts. See, that's a composite for you.

The Big Bang Theory - internal combustion engine

That's about where I am with cars.

One of the great things about teaching material science, though, is that I find myself far more willing to admit that ignorance than I am in the chemistry classroom where I pretty much always know more than my students do.

In the material science classroom, I'm far more likely to know less than somebody in the audience does.

The history of the turbo encabulator

I'm not doing any original research here, folks, just duplicating information readily available in Wikipedia's article on the turboencabulator in case that information ever leaves the web.

From the article...

The original technical description of the "turbo-encabulator" was written by British graduate student John Hellins Quick (1923-1991). It was published in 1944 by theBritish Institution of Electrical Engineers Students’ Quarterly Journal [in an article titled "The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry" by "J.H. Quick, Student"^[2] as also noted by consulting firm Arthur D. Little in a 1995 reprint of Quick's description, and giving Quick's full name.^[3]

The earliest written U.S. source may have been in 1946, in an Arthur D. Little Industrial Bulletin. An early popular American reference to the turbo-encabulator appeared in an article by New York lawyer Bernard Salwen in Time on April 15, 1946. Part of Salwen's job was to review technical manuscripts. He was amused by the jargon and passed on the description from the Arthur D. Little pamphlet.^[1]

Time got with the gag, featuring the device in a May 6, 1946 issue, described as "An adjunct to the turbo-encabulator, employed whenever a barescent skor motion is required."^[4] A month later a response to reader mail on the feature appeared in the June 3, 1946 issue:

If the sackful of mail we have received from you is any indication, the story of "The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry" struck many a responsive chord. Aside from those of you who wanted to be reassured that TIME hadn't been taken in, we received the customary complaints about using too much technical jargon for the layman, observations such as "My husband says it sounds like a new motor; I say it sounds like a dictionary that has been struck by lightning"; suggestions that it "might have come out of the mouth of Danny Kaye," and plaintive queries like: "Is this good?" Wrote one bemused U.S. Navyman: "It'sh poshible." To some the turbo-encabulator sounded as though it would be a "wonderful machine for changing baby's diapers." A reader from Hoboken assumed that it would be on sale soon in Manhattan department stores. Many of you wrote in to thank us for illuminating what you have long wanted to tell your scientist friends."^[5]

In 1962 a turboencabulator data sheet was created by engineers at General Electric's Instrument Department, in West Lynn, Massachusetts. It quoted from the previous sources and was inserted into the General Electric Handbook.^[6] The turboencabulator data sheet had the same format as the other pages in the G.E. Handbook. The engineers added "Shure Stat" in "Technical Features", which was peculiar only to the Instrument Department, and included the first known graphic representation of a "manufactured" Turboencabulator using parts made at the Instrument Department.

In c. 1977 Bud Haggart, an actor who appeared in many industrial training films in and around Detroit, performed in the first film realization of the description and operation of the "Turboencabulator", using a truncated script adapted from Quick's article. Bud convinced director Dave Rondot and the film crew to stay after the filming of an actual GMC Trucks project training film to realize the Turboencabulator spot.^[7]

In c. 1988 the former Chrysler Corporation "manufactured" the Turboencabulator in a video spoof.^[8] Rockwell Automation"manufactured" the renamed Retro-Encabulator in another video spoof in c. 1997.^[9] On April Fools' Day 2013, Hank Green released a SciShow episode on YouTube entitled "The Retro-Proto-Turbo-Encabulator."^[10]

Here are scans of the original Quick article...

...and the GE Handbook...

Mantis Murder Shrimp (slow motion) - Smarter Every Day 121

That's pugilism at its finest.

The first punch is thrown at 1:38 and then shown again in slow motion ten seconds later - then with sound effects.

We then get an explanation of the potential energy storage mechanism at 2:45. That storage mechanism requires a strong material - an organic composite of helicular (sp?) chitin - at 4:29. The variation of the material within the saddle then, is phenomenally complex, varying throughout the surface, depth, and location within the saddle.

Go mantis shrimp!

Interestingly, this is, I think, the only time Destin's sister has been shown.

Rockwell Retro Encabulator

I miss the lab coats.

To be honest, I don't think that the swap of grey suits in favor of the more traditional lab coats gains us anything. Nor am I sure that the change from having a car engine to the trio of computer panels is better.

But, to each his or her own...

Lead in the Water - the Flint water Crisis

Flint Water Crisis chemistry

The environmental and human tragedy of the lead-contaminated Flint water system is awful.

The chemistry, however, is fascinating.

I'll readily admit that I had no idea we still used lead pipes anywhere in modern plumbing (ironically named after lead's Latin name). I thought that lead had been entirely excised from the pipes in - at least - the Western world or the developed world or the whole world.

No, it turns out that there are still lead pipes in our water system, we're just adding corrosion inhibitors called orthophosphates to crate lead (I assume IV) phosphate layers that won't dissolve into the water coming into our homes.

Without those orthophosphates, however, the lead heads right into the water...like it did in Flint, Michigan.

The corrosion then also lowered the chlorine level and allowed new bacteria to thrive in the last pipe leading into the homes and businesses of Flint,

On Friday, officials at the McLaren Regional Medical Center in Flint said they found low levels of Legionella bacteria in the hospital’s water supply in 2014. That bacteria may have caused a recent outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, a severe kind of pneumonia, that sickened 87 people — 10 of whom died — in Genesee County since Flint switched water sources, (source)

Corrosion matters, folks.

Read more about the political and human side of the story here.

Big thanks to, as is often the case, Compound Interest for the graphic up there.

Careers in Materials Science and Engineering

There aren't a lot of parts of science that couldn't use some help from a material scientist.

That's pretty much what I got from this 2:24 video.

Material science can get you to space (conducting experiments in space), the ocean (soaking up oil from spills), the surgical suite (developing heart valves, bone plates, and more), wind farms, industry for apprenticeships, and even the universities of Britain (Swansea, Southhampton, Sheffield, and more).

There are a few academic requirements mentioned toward the end, and those are pretty specific to Great Britain, but the equivalent requirements still exist here in the US in different details.

April Fools Episode - The Retro-Proto-Turbo-Encabulator

It's nice to see that the classics never die.

Here Hank Green - of SciShow, Crash Course, VlogBrothers, and many more YouTube channels - gets into the act of explaining our old friend, the 'newly-released' Retro-Proto-Turbo-Encabulator.

What is Materials Science?

Ah, the Brits and their wacky, variable accents.

Most of the video is understandable even by non-British folks. Admittedly, it is helpful to know that The Shard mentioned at 0:25 is a tall, glass-covered building in London.

This video would fit in nicely when we talk in our summer workshops when we ask the 'students' to define material science. It goes through a nice overview of what material science covers - properties of different material categories (metal, ceramics, polymer, corrosion). We also get the idea that it's a bridge between technology and science as well as how material scientists try to improve and change the properties of the materials under study as well as development of new materials.

Nice vid

Materials Selection

Back to the Brits and their accents.

I've no clue, by the way, who the Advanced Metallic Systems CDT is, though a brief bit of research tells me that the CDT is for the Centre (their spelling, not mine) for Doctoral Training.

Here we get an overview of some of the concerns that go into material selection - cost, performance, lifespan, corrosion, wear-resistance - as well as a few examples of materials used and why they were chosen (car windshields, ties, car bodies) and general mentions that new materials must be developed to meet new requirements for assemblies.

Making Glass

Making Glass

This experiment comes to us from the Royal Society of Chemistry (link) (hence pardon the spelling and a couple of odd word choices - bung?).

In my material science classes, we make glass beads using borax and nichrome or copper wires. It's a fun and fairly easy experiment. I like, however, the slightly but not hugely more precise nature of this one. I'm also not so sure about the use of lead (II) oxide which is then disposed of by simply dissolving any remnants in nitric acid then diluting it and dumping it down the sink.

I'm not so sure lead (II) oxide (or nitrate by that point, maybe) should go down the drain.

By the way, the link in the article (British Glass, toward the end) is actually here. The link within the article is missing a colon, hence it's broken.

Rain Flows Through Permeable Concrete

The urban, concrete and black top islands are disasterour for our waterways.

As the above video shows ever so briefly (at 0:33), 90% of all water that falls on concrete heads directly into the rivers and streams carrying with it pollutants from the surface of roadways, driveways, garages, and more. Every drop of oil that drips from our cars, every bit of transmission fluid, all of the spilled paint and soap...it all goes into - if we're lucky - the storm drains (to be treated) or straight into our natural waterways.

Pervious concrete just might be able to help avoid that, allowing almost all water that falls upon it to head into the natural groundwater where it can be dealt with naturally.

(I've mentioned pervious concrete before, but that was without the cool video to go with it.)

Hydrogel Beads in a Frying Pan

That's just weird.

I don't have much to say here other than that it's a weird effect using some polymers.

There really isn't much material science connection. Maybe it's something to know that if you make a product out of hydrogel beads (probably a polyacrylamide) that it can cause this strange interaction if a metal as hot as a frying pan comes into contact with it.

Most of the comments on IFLScience and the YouTube video suggest that it's caused by the Leidenfrost effect, but that still doesn't make this any less weird and unexpected.

Plus, who throws these things into a frying pan in the first place?

Russians, eh?