Expanding Foam For Filling Post Holes

So, the reason I'm posting these is that there's apparently a new-to-me use for the expanding polymer foam that we use in our polymers labs: filling post holes.

I've always heard of using cement - or quickcrete - for setting fence (or mailbox or basketball goal) posts, but I guess expandable foam could be strong enough to work.

There are multiple options, however, not just Sika's product.



The above video - made by Secure Set - demonstrates that their product is far superior to Sika's and that Sika's product container while convenient can be explosively dangerous (2:54).



Admittedly, the Secure Set videos just might be a little biased toward their product.

Then again, so is the Rainbow Foam video. Though I like their clinical narration and reasonably consistent tests.



I do with they would name what product P and product B are. I have to assume those initials were chosen because they fit the product names that I just don't know.

Oh, and there is a bit of blood in this video as the mute demonstrator cuts himself in the video cut between 9:10 and 9:14. It's not spurting blood or anything, but I thought I'd warn you.

And I am kinda glad we get to finally see the demonstrator's face at 16:35.

Admittedly, that last video is way too long, but I appreciate that they show that the tests have to be performed on each of the products with reasonably repeatable precision.

Updated cKit manual!!!!!

We've been giving out cKits from the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (actually, they're just NACE now) at our ASM summer teachers camps for quite a few years now. The Kit is outstanding, and contains a lab manual, a comic book of Inspector Protector, a set of electrodes, a multimeter, a booklet about NACE, and a CD of the lab manual.

All of which is great...

...except the lab manual.

Which was great once but has been recently showing its age. The labs were developed by some of our ASM master teachers for NACE, and you can see their students in the lab photos. Since the labs were developed nearly twenty years ago now, however, our procedures have been refined and adjusted to be more successful, more portable, and often less wasteful. During the summer camps, then, we've been sharing the adjusted procedures and telling our campers to make those adjustments in spite of what the lab manual says.

But now we won't have to do that anymore because the lab manual has been updated.

I'll admit that I'm going to miss the iPhone-commercial-like graphics, but I'm thrilled that the manual now includes our procedure for brassing a penny.

In case you've taken our camp already and have the old version, a pdf version of the new manual has been posted by NACE on their website.

Material Science Girl's website

Material Science Girl is one of our ASM, summer camp, master teachers. She's at Tolles High School on the far west side of Columbus, a vocational high school that teaches two years of material science.

Her curriculum - created and taught along with another master teacher at Tolles - started out being pretty similar to our summer camps but has grown and evolved from there.

As a way to share documents and videos with her students - and with you and us - she made a website (matscigirl.weebly.com).

On the site, she has absolutely no personal information about herself, but she's pretty awesome. She does have individual sections about...

• ASM summer camps
• Solids
• Metals
• Ceramics & glass
• Polymers
• Composites

Sadly she doesn't have photos of the outstanding projects that her students made, but she does have a whole bunch of articles, worksheets, and lab instructions that she uses in class.

Plus she's used only her own in-class photos to mark the website sections.