Borax glass beads - who knew?

One of the issues that we run into with our material science students is that their attendance in awful. We teach them in a largely hands-on, lab-based class, and they don't come to school as regularly as we would like them to.

To work around that problem, we often try to find - or we're beginning to produce our own - videos showing what we did in lab. Yes, we want the students to be present and do the lab on their own. Second best is to have them come in and make up the lab outside of class, but that's not always possible - or something they're willing to do. The final option is to just say 'watch this video and answer the questions.'

This past year I went looking for a video showing our borax bead lab and didn't have much luck.

Along the way, however, I learned that there's a chemical analysis technique to identify ions in solution that's pretty similar to our borax bead lab. The technique was apparently invented by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1812 and involved forming a colorless borax bead on a platinum (or nichrome) wire. The colorless bead is then dipped lightly into a solution and reheated. Each ion them produces a characteristic color in the oxidizing and reducing portion of the flame.

It's remarkably similar to what we're doing in class, though we're getting the atoms and ions from the wire directly. Which leaves me with a question - we get a color from nichrome wire, but the test directions suggest that a colorless bead can be produced from the nichrome wire. Can anyone explain that seeming contradiction? Are we just heating our bead longer than recommended in the test protocol?



Notice the paper notes written in an Indian language.



Interesting to use a soda lime glass rod as the substrate for the borax bead.



I like the colors.



Interestingly, many of the videos I found explaining the test were taught by Eastern European or Indian speakers. I assume the borax bead test has fallen out of favor in the US - because of more instrumentation availability - but is still part of a chemistry curriculum in other nations?



Some ions apparently require the use of UV light to distinguish their identities.

Super Expensive Metals - Periodic Table of Videos

I once had about $20,000 cash in the car with me. I was terrified.

I can't imagine how freaked out I would be picking up half a million dollars of gold much less three times value in other metals.

The Professor visits a factory refining (is that the right term? maybe it's just casting) platinum group metals (platinum, iridium, and rhodium, primarily).  The factory then processes the metals into various forms - ingots, wire, woven screens.

That's phenomenal to see.

DoD Corrosion Prevention Podcast

So much needless special effects and multiplication of the speaker. - and motion that does more to distract from that focus us on the message. This video just screams 90's to me even though it was clearly produced in the 2000s.

I had no idea that we had a director of corrosion policy and oversight (corrdefense).

The most useful part of this video might be in the distracting animation of the 12 types of corrosion that rotate at the top of the video.

And I'm not sure I'd call this video a podcast.

The Importance of Corrosion Prevention & Reinforcing Our Nation's Infrasctructure

Not really a surprise that painters want us to know that bridges and infrastructure can corrode. It's like they might have some sort of financial interest.

I don't know that they had to go to the efforts to photoshop out the bridges in the intro, however. That's a little creepy looking.

There's a really nice animation at 1:10 showing the anode and cathodes forming on the same piece of iron, then they mostly go into showing how we can prevent (or at least minimize) corrosion via inspection and maintenance (mostly through painting - I'm sorry - through 'coating appli[cation] by certified coating application specialists on a regular maintenance schedule')

Corrosion in Motion Golden Gate Bridge

Doncha just love student project videos?

At least it looks like these kids might actually have been at the Golden Gate Bridge for some of their filming. And while their special effects aren't exactly on a professional level just yet, they gave the monster attacks, earthquakes, and explosions a good, college (or high school) try.

They do a decent job explaining why the iron oxidizes, including a pretty thorough writing of the chemical reaction of the rusting of iron. They also show a cross-section of what galvanizing layers look like and what reactions work within the galvanizing.

The video does end a bit abruptly, but it's not a bad effort. I'd be impressed if my students produced this video. Maybe this'll be something to work toward for next year.

Tempering Process

I've had a few former students sell Cutco Knives. I did end up buying a couple of knives from the first student because I had pitty on his 'cutting the rope' demonstration. In the long run, I haven't been impressed with the knives.

That all being said, I do use this video in my class to show quenching and tempering. It's a great show of those techniques.

Annealing Metal

Yeah, but how do you get the bracelet to be the right shape and size?

Do you actually wrap the cooled, annealed metal around your wrist, or is there some sort of mandrill that you use as an arm stand-in?

And how do you get the pretty, peened appearance on the surface of the bracelet?

I have so many questions - because I pretty much understand that annealing the metal makes it more workable (while admittedly, developing some pretty nasty scale).

Crystal Birth

No voice-over, no explanation, just pretty videos of reduced metal crystals growing from the application of an electric current to a metallic ion solution set to music.

But they're really pretty.

Don't Play With ACID SLIME

But why would you even...

I mean, what did you think...

It's just gonna...

smh...

These stand-in kings of random try acid slime a few different ways. They take slime (glue slime, not PVA) and dunk it in various acids (sulfuric, hydrochloric, muriatic - which is just hydrochloric, and sulfuric - yes, I wrote that twice). They mix the glue with the acid instead of water and try to make slime. And they mix baking soda into the slime before then putting that slime in the acids.

None of it comes out terribly exciting.

The slimes made with the acid don't work, though, because I assume the acids break down the polymers - since the polymers are just organic molecules to begin with.

Risk List 2015

I'll readily admit that I'm not 100% sure that I understand what rare earth elements are all about. While driving around on vacation, I listened to most of this On Point radio show about them, and I'm still a bit dodgy about which elements they are, why they're useful to us, and why the heck China apparently owns all of them.

What I do know, however, is that loads of politicians and talking heads say that rare earth elements are desperately important to loads of our defense and manufacturing sectors and that China apparently has the entire world of rare earth elements in the palm of their hand.

So says that 2015 Risk List, ranking the relative risks to our supply chains from disruptions in various element production.

What I do know is that we need to get us some of that there reform.

Source - http://www.bgs.ac.uk/downloads/start.cfm?id=3075 

Rare World Metals Mint

Check out Rare World Metals Mint.

They sell - and I know this will shock you - rare metals that have been minted.

Mostly they sell one troy ounce samples of rare metals in high (99%+) purity. They don't do bulk. They don't do raw. They just sell these samples for - as far as I can tell - collectors who want to have rare metal samples.

They do offer some relatively inexpensive offerings.

• a minted AVDP ounce of copper, for example, is going for $1.49 as I type this
• nickel is $3.95 per AVDP ounce
• zinc for $8.95 per troy ounce

but things go up quickly from there...

• rhenium $179 per troy ounce
• iridium $1895 per troy ounce
• palladium $58.95 per gram
• osmium $965 per troy ounce
• rhodium $3500 per troy ounce
• platinum $59.50 per 1/25 of a troy ounce

...because why not splurge if you're going to collect the good stuff?

As they write at the end of their rhodium description, "own what's rare!"

I wonder if they have a wishlist feature so I can make life easy for my loved ones this Christmas...

How It's Made Crude Oil

For a video about crude oil, the accent of the narrator seems fairly refined.

When I was teaching one of our ASM summer camps in Houston a few years back, I was lucky enough to get to go to a working (but not producing) oil rig where the management company (I really should remember their name, but it escapes me at the moment - started with a W) tested their equipment and helped troubleshoot the rigs they managed for their customers. That experience - going their even once - made the drilling of crude oil much more real for me.

The above video goes through the process of drilling and purification - though they stop short of the fractionating columns, but I have a few videos lined up for that over the new few months.

My stuff: fiber optic glass magnifier

Doesn't look like much, does it? It certainly didn't look like much when Debbie pulled hers out at year two camp at Rowan University a few years back, but it was fascinating enough that I hunted down one of my own.

What you see there is a piece of fiberoptic glass, flat on top and bottom and tapered from a circle at the 'bottom' to a widened rectangle at the top.

When the glass is placed on a piece of paper, like our crystal structure periodic table, here's what it does.

With no batteries, no source of external light, it either magnifies (if the widened end is upward) or shrinks (if the narrow, circular end is upward) the image underneath the glass. In enlarging, it does seemingly fade the image a bit - which makes sense as the light is being spread out. In shrinking the image, it almost 'densifies' or 'concentrates' the image which again makes sense to me.

I haven't found a great way to use this item in our material science curriculum as much more than a neat curiosity object, but it's fascinating to have.

And, in case you wanted to take the route I took in trying to find one of your own, here's the info printed on the back of the magnifier.

My stuff: silicon tower

This might be my prize material science possession. It's three pieces of silicon.

The Lego figure is just there to show some scale. I figure everybody knows how big a Lego minifigure is, especially Margaret Hamilton.

These were sitting in the back room of the original Princeton High School building before it was torn down. During the last year in the building - as we transitioned across the street - we were doing a lot of paring down, preparing to move what we needed and leave the rest behind for a public auction. This was on the shelf of another science teacher's storage room and was clearly bound for the auction. They didn't know what it was, didn't want it, didn't think it had much value.

And I grabbed it with great gusto.

I wasn't letting this one go because I know I'll likely never get another chance at it.

You can see the process of producing mono-crystalline silicon in videos I've posted before. The silicon has to be refined before this (something I got to see done outside of Butte, Montana - but where they didn't allow any photos, sadly). That results in something like the rough chunk in the front, left of the photo. This chunk is roughly small-fist sized.

That chunk - and a bunch more like it - is melted and a single silicon crystal is lowered into the rotating vat of molten silicon. The single crystal is slowly raised from the surface of the molten silicon, rotating in one direction while the vat is rotated in the opposite direction. If the conditions are just right, an single crystal of silicon is raised from the vat. That's what the tower is in the photo above. The final product was likely taller and didn't end in a flat bottom layer but rather a second tapered end.

Check out the process from about 1:00 - 3:00 in the below video.



The tower (technically a pull of silicon) would then be sliced into flat wafers that would then be etched into computer chips.

As to how Princeton High School got the silicon tower and chunks...I'm not entirely sure.

I've heard from a couple of non-PHS teachers that Cincinnati had a silicon wafer production facility that shut down and donated silicon samples to local schools, but I haven't been able to track down any information about that donation. I did find information about two silicon wafer production facilities in the Cincinnati area. One was near Maineville, but that one closed down in 2010. That's too late to fit into our timeline. The other, now known as Milacron, produced silicon wafers in the 1970s-1990s ("by 1984, the Mill had become the world's largest supplier of this type of wafer.) While I don't have any proof, that fits the timeline of a possible donation to Princeton much better. So I'm assuming we have Milacron to thank for this donation.

The Best Way to Pack Spheres - Numberphils

I warn you, this one is pretty nerdy.

Most of it is about the mathematical proof that spheres cannot be packed to occupy more than 74.05% of a volume. There's a lot of math and handwaving involved in that proof.

The part that fits with what we teach about material science is from about 1:30 to 6:30. After that it gets into the proof.

I am curious about one thing, though. At 4:53 he shows something that he says is the smallest part of the crystal that can repeat to form the entire crystal. I would normally think of that as the unit cell, but I've never seen that specific image as the unit cell for FCC - which is what I think is being shown. Can anybody help clarify that for me?

The Science of Flint's Water Crisis

Ok, Hank, slow things down a little bit.

The chemistry happening here is serious but incredibly important. It's a great application of Ksp if you get into that in chemistry (especially AP chemistry).

There's a coating of lead with orthophosphate...if you add enough orthophosphate to keep the coating constant. At least there should be that coating. There was before the water source switched because the Detroit water system added orthophoshpate.

Then there was too much chlorine in the water - river water picking up run-off salt. Then they added disinfectants with even more chlorine - which reacted with the iron and lead to inactivate the disinfectants and draw more lead into the water. So they added more chlorine.

And they caused a problem that they solved with more chlorine.

Good lord...

Five years on, and the problem isn't remotely solved yet.

Black Plastic Is Everywhere And It Doesn't Get Recycled, Here's Why

But I thought there was a carbon cycle to recycle things.

Among the hundreds of other problems that need to take place in our recycling streams, there's another one that's needed - finding a way to identify black plastic. According to the above video, the black plastic isn't recognized by the IR-light sorting device as plastic at all.

But black plastic looks cool.

The Library of Rare Colors

(Turns out I'd previously posted an article about this Harvard library. No matter, because the video is a bit more interactive than the article is.)

This is one of Tom's rarer videos in that he barely talks during it. He introduces and closes the video but largely lets the Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies explain the organization of, history of, and depth and breadth of their collection of color standards.

A few years back, the ASM summer camp in Indianapolis (RIP the Indy camp, apparently) got to tour the labs at the Indianapolis Art Museum and got a glimpse of a much smaller pigment collection that they used there to help determine the provenance of artworks but knowing when certain pigments came into popular use. If a pigment from a painting was first used in the 1820's, for example, it's unlikely to have been in a painting claimed to have been done by Titian.

The Venn diagram in my head between art and material science continues to grow.

Bizarre liquid jets explained - the Kaye effect

Hold on a second. I'll be right back after I grab a tray and a bottle of shampoo.

The streams of shampoo above shoot out from the pile of shampoo with nothing other than gravity and really thin streams falling from above.

Turns out it's because shampoo is sheer thinning (like ketchup is) but that shampoo makes the transition from high to low viscosity very quickly, quickly enough to create divots (as its viscosity decreases) in the accumulating pile but then become highly viscous and shoot off the other side of the 'ramp' that they've just created.

Who knew?

Summer 2019 ASM Teacher Material Science Camps

The summer of 2019 looks to be a bit complicated to schedule with many weeks having only one or two camps but others having as many as nine. That means that we need a whole bunch of our master teachers to man those busy weeks and will be compressing the ordering of supplies from Flinn, Ed Inn, and IASCO. Hope Ronda's ready for us.

If you're new to the blog, take a look at the ASM material science summer camps. They're phenomenal, week-long, free summer camps for teachers where we teach inexpensive techniques for hands-on science explorations (and the science content behind them) geared toward middle- and high-school science classes.

They're awesome.

How It's Made Computer Recyling Gold

I'm actually a little surprised to see this type of recycling happening in what looks like a European country. Admittedly, the video seemingly does what it can to avoid showing us anything to
distinguish what country this recycling is happening in - no writing on much other than the forklift, no spoken language - at best it looks like it might be a Northern European country. Everything I'd heard was that this mostly took place only in countries with far less strict environmental and worker safety regulations.

I love that they're using aqua regia to dissolve the gold.

Then we get some outstanding electrochemistry going on with electrochemical reduction growing copper then silver then gold crystals. Phenomenal stuff (mostly in animation, admittedly).

Trigger warning - 4:15 - Corny joke relating fish and chips to computer chips.

How we solved the mystery of Libyan desert glass

I'm ready with another Christmas gift idea for your favorite MatSciWit blogger.

Today's article looks at the evidence for a meteorite impact in Libya creating temperatures high enough to fuse sand into glass. The scientists were trying "to nut out" (their phrase, seriously, check the article) whether the meteorite actually impacted the Earth's surface (leaving a crater that hasn't ever been found) or whether an airburst could have released enough energy to fuse the silica into glass.

The researchers looked for mineral evidence of meteorite impacts - zirconia and reidite. The 'smoking gun' (again, their phrase) would have been reidite, but they found no reidite - because it resrcytalizes into zircon if given time and cooling.

What they did find, however, when looking at "the crystal orientation of tiny interlocking grains of recystalized zircon" was that the orentiations showed evidence of former deformation from impact - something that could not have been created by an airburst.

That's what they say.

Transparent Aluminum - Star Trek Technology is now Real

Wait, if the material is actually a mixture of aluminum, oxygen, and nitrogen - "also known as Alon" (about which I've posted before)- then it's really a ceramic not a metal at all.

I feel a little mislead by this obvious click-bait title.

How Hard Can You Hit a Golf Ball? (at 100,000 FPS) - Smarter Every Day

I'm not always down with Mark Rober's videos. He tends a bit much toward goofy, seemingly-feigned excitement for my tastes, and he tends to bring this out in Destin, too. I'm starting to see a trend in YouTube videos that could easily be made about 30% shorter if they'd just edit out the people going "Whoa!!!!!!!...Yeah Baby!...Look at that!".

But...

To hit the serious matsci/science content in bullet points here...

• 6:25 - compressed golf ball with elastic deformation
• 7:05 - "The ball is hot." - transformation of kinetic energy into thermal energy
• 7:30 - destructive testing and inelastic deformation
• 7:40 - Destin actually says, "an area of physics called material science" and demonstrates elastic and plastic deformation with a 'force-distance' curve (pretty much a stress strain curve). He also compared the curves for a generic metal and a generic plastic, then real and practice golf balls
• 9:15 - We see a plastically deformed but still intact golf ball, one that was hit somewhere above 300 mph against the anvil.
• 10:05 - 50-year old golf ball hits the anvil and is obliterated, apparent source of the apparently-color-enhanced video still above

How To Stop a Colossal Bridge Corroding

Every year a trillion dollars are spent in the US (source) in dealing with corrosion (prevention, repair, research, down time, etc).

I'm glad Britain is spending a few dollars as well, particularly in keeping the bridges upright a little bit longer.

Here Tom Scott goes through the process of checking the cables of the Humber Bridge for corrosion ten years after a gigantic dehumidifier was installed for the air inside the cables.

World's Lightest Solid!

I've written about aerogel before (and perpetually mention the demise of my one piece).

But I haven't shown a video that uses a FLIR camera (1:00) to show the heat zones as they insulate a chocolate bunny from a bunsen burner using aerogel, where they show the industrial process of making aerogel (5:25), or especially where you actually get to see a supercritical fluid through the window (6:25 - the absolute highlight for a teacher who used to teach phase diagrams in AP chemistry), or where you get to see a mid-process 'wet' aerogel filled with alcohol (4:50).

If you happen to follow both of my blogs, you might see this double posted because of that supercritical fluid bit.

Seriously, Rebecca, you'd have my heart if you bought me some new aerogel.

Can You Swim in Shade Balls? - Veritasium

If you want to know why Dr Derek is head-deep in what looks like a ball pit (a la xkcd), you probably should watch this video (which might lead you down the rabbit hole into a fascinating video about what going viral and chasing YouTube's algorithm means for YouTubers).

But if not, you should check out the fifteen seconds starting at 2:40 above. Dr Derek mentions that the shade balls (not actually play balls) have "sort of arranged themselves in crystal structures where they're close packed, and there are boundaries between those grains".

There are a few more mentions of close packing efficiency (at 3:55) when it's mentioned that the spheres only cover 91% of the surface area, and you can see the grains reform as Dr Derek and his friends swim through the pool. There's also some physics mentioned about drag being proportional to the square of velocity.

Mostly, though, this is a stunt video, but c'mon, who needs a crystal demonstrator?

Becky, can I put a pool in the budget for next year?

August 3, 2013 Stick Bomb Tutorial

Ok, this might be a bit of a stretch today but stick with me. (groan)

We study tempered glass in material science. We go through the process of tempering - molten glass directly into cool water. The outside hardens quickly, locking in its shape while the inside is still molten and expanded. As the interior cools then, it tries to shrink and can't. So the inside is in tension - pulling inward - while the outside is in compression - being pulled together tightly by the inside glass.

If you don't know what I'm talking about or need the most awesome tutorial and visual of that ever, check out Destin's Prince Rupert's Drop video at 3:25. Destin also mentions that the Prince Rupert's Drop stores mechanical strain energy.

And for some reason this year when teaching tempered glass, the idea of a stick bomb popped into my head. I remember making very basic versions - of these when I was a teenager, but I never made anything approaching the long chains that you can see in the video up above. I am pretty sure, however, that the stick bombs also store mechanical strain energy in their structures - just like tempered glass does.

And it's a heck of a lot easier to have the students make in class than tempered glass is.



Though you can have the students make Prince Rupert's Drops.

Plastic: The Scourge of Cities Becoming a Resource

I firmly believe we will solve this problem - "producing useful chemicals from our plastic waster in the future" - one way or the other.

It might be because we've solved the problem of sorting and recycling plastics, it might be because we've figured out we can't solve the problem but we stop using plastics, or it might - most sadly - be because we've poisoned our world enough that we can't make any more plastics...or offspring.

I'm hopeful we solve the problem before we get to option number three.

The above video - using a chemical catalyst to separate and break down PET molecules from original plastic waste - seems hopeful, but we've heard it before, and every process has run into hurdles of upscaling the process and using it on a mixed waste stream. We're trashy people, let's be honest.

I am happy to hear, however, that lots of big companies are working on the problem. Now, if they just weren't still selling us plastic products while they were.

REDUCE...reuse...recycle...

The Bismuthsmith

I've made bismuth crystals once or twice. I'm no Todd Bollenbaugh or anything, but I'm getting there.

Even Todd, however, isn't any sort of Bismuthsmith. He - actually, his name is Kyle Lauzon according to his Facebook page - seems to be an absolute bismuth master.

He makes tons of gorgeous hopper crystals and casts loads of varied figures.

...and he seems able to control the oxidation rate well enough that he can get consistent coloration from the oxides.

If you check out some of his live stream videos - through which he apparently sells his wares at discounted prices, I'm not sure how that works - you'll see that all the figures of a certain type have very similar coloration. He's obviously not doing that randomly.

And he seems able to control the color on the hopper crystals, too, because you can order specific colors.

I'm impressed, man...really impressed.

Scientists made LEDs 60% brighter by copying firefly lanterns

Source - https://www.pnas.org/content/109/46/18674

I fully recognize that the above image is a bit detailed. I'd rather embed the video I think is here, about halfway down the page. It worked when I first viewed the article a few months ago, but by the time I got around to posting, the video seems to have died.

Such is life, eh?

Speaking of 'such is life', the article today - written for popular consumption from Gizmodo or the original research from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or even a middle ground from phys.org- shows a great example of biomimcry. A team of Korean scientists wondered why firefly bulbs were so bright, so they headed to the electron microscope to check out the structures of the light-producing organs.

Turns out the organs were shingled, allowing light to transmit from the top and also the edge of the surface. When the scientists mimicked the structure, their LED was 60% brighter than an equivalent using an unshingled structure.

Technically, "[t]he bioinspired OLEDs clearly showed side-enhanced super-Lambertian emission with a wide-viewing angle" (from acs.org).

I would've said that first, but it's such a simple sentence, I wasn't sure you'd read onward if I opened with that.

Does Rebar Rust?

Thanks, Grady

Seriously, I love this guy's videos. His explanations are simple and straightforward. His tone of voice is interesting enough without either being pedantic or assuming too much prior knowledge for me to understand what he's talking about.

He also builds phenomenal demonstration aids to show exactly what he's showing.

This video explains and shows the main ways we prevent rebar from corroding due to cracking allowing in water or other contaminants. He then demonstrates a significant way to avoid these problems - fiber reinforcement.

He also mentions a couple of possibility of replacing steel rebar with either polymer or basalt (?) rebar and why we aren't doing that just yet.

Making metal crystals from Pepto-Bismol

Admittedly, at first I looked at this video with some excitement, thinking that I might be able to use the procedure to demonstrate reduction of a metal in my material science class - or in chemistry.

But the procedure is insanely problematic and long and scattershot in its success. There's no way that rookie science students could perform this with any level of success.

It is, however, frickin' cool to watch.

Plus the video is insanely high def.

Around the Corner - How Differential Steering Works

I'll readily admit that I'm not so sure this is a material science video, but it taught me how differential steering works more clearly than anything I'd ever seen before.

It's stunningly obvious and clear.

This is a marvelous video.

1950s B.F. Goodrich Rubber Products Promotions Film by John Sutherland 50884

I know what you're thinking. I've already posted this, right?

Well, sort of.

That already-posted video was 10 1/2 minutes long. This one is almost 17 minutes and contains some extra content. It's sort of like a director's cut versus the original release.

We still get the 'what makes a ball bounce' opening (though the edit misses a line or two) and the horribly offensive 'Japanese' sun at 4:00.

At 6:30, though, we take an entirely new field trip to the artificial rubber lab to see how polymers are made - 'tree rubber', man-made rubber, and Geon. For example, we see vinegar being added to man-made rubber (kind of like our latex/bouncy ball lab in the summer camp) to produce a really messy clump of rubber balls.

The various animations - world war II, the monomers being ordered around by the 'Sargent' catalyst - at 9:00 - and the plasticizer's exaggerated curves at 9:40.

There is a couple of minutes of new content around 11:30 showing off new applications of synthetic rubber (drilling hoses, v-belts (?), lifting cars, insulated rubber boots, swim caps - perfect for smoking by the pool apparently, airplane de-icers, tubeless tires).

But we still close with - in spite of learning 'how to make a plane fly faster than sound...to create new products and materials...even [to] split the atom' -  not knowing what makes a ball bounce.

The Problem With Concrete

That concrete block is so cute with the two pipe cleaner arms and the boxing gloves beating the snot out of...

WAIT A MINUTE! Is that concrete block beating up Earth?!?!

Yup...concrete - as the video appropriately points out, actually cement - is awful for our environment because of the CO2 that is released in the use of fossil fuels to initially heat the calcium carbonate and the CO2 that is released as the calcium carbonate decomposes into calcium oxide.

Yup...more stuff that's bad for our environment.

Luckily, this video does suggest a few possible alternatives.

How a Hockey Puck is Made

Corny joke at...wait, where's the corny joke?

I don't know that I can ever trust How It's Made again if they're not going to include their signature corny joke in the segment.

"Certain minerals" (at 0:38) is way too vague for me. I want to know which minerals.

That 'carbon black filler' (at 1:11) looks dangerously powdery. I hope the workers are wearing correct PPE.

I am consistently amazed at how much of the manufacturing process is done by hand.

Carbon Fiber - The Materials Of The Future?

The rocket animation shown around 1:00 looks pretty hokey to me, though the concept is pretty outstanding.

I was speaking to a former student of mine who now works as an engineer in the aircraft industry. She said that one of the major issues with the carbon fiber laminates being used in airplane bodies nowadays is going to be the lack of recyclability after the plane's usable lifespan.

In this video we get a brief history of how carbon fibers are made, the initial uses of and driving forces for development carbon fibers, an explanation of the directional strength of the composite material, the general procedure of curing the laminate, and a quick look at SpaceX's use of carbon fiber composite laminate in its reusable fuel tank.

It lacks a bit in the 'how it's made' first steps, but it's a great overview of how carbon fiber works, its strengths and weaknesses.

LignoLoc - Collated Wooden Nails

If I mention the word nails to you, what're your first thoughts?

If you're thinking of shiny, red, sparkly finger tips running up and down your arm, those aren't the right nails.

If you're thinking of steel slivers that hold things together, that's about what I'm talking about.

If you're thinking of wooden slivers that hold things together, then you're a big liar.

But apparently the LignoLoc people aren't liars, and they're thinking about wooden slivers holding wooden planks together.

How cool and environmentally friendly is that?

Actually, how environmentally friendly is that really? How many birch trees does it take to make a wooden nail?

Just how tough is Security Glass?

I'm thinking that the guy in the white suit might want to seek out counseling.

He seems to have some anger issues.

To quote, ESG Glass is...

The UK's leading independent glass processor, toughener and laminator for the professional trade.

Don't know about their healthcare services for their employees, though. Then again, if the employees could just beat the snot out of their own glass every so often, that might help.

Searching for Starlite

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I stumbled upon - thanks to YouTube's recommendation algorithms - the video below...




...which references a material named starlite and claims to have reproduced something akin to starlite.

But I didn't know what starlite was...and didn't know why the egg test was a big deal.

So I went looking, and it turns out lots of people are looking for starlite.

And they've been looking for a few years...(from wikipedia)

Starlite is a material claimed to be able to withstand and insulate from extreme heat. It was invented by British amateur chemist and hairdresser Maurice Ward during the 1970s and 1980s, and received significant publicity after coverage of the material aired in 1990 on the BBC science and technology show Tomorrow's World. The name Starlite was coined by Ward's granddaughter Kimberly. 

Despite interest from NASA and other major technological companies, Ward, who died in 2011, never revealed the composition of Starlite, which is still unknown. He once mentioned that his close family knows the fabrication process, but after his death neither his wife nor any of his four daughters have produced any sample to demonstrate that they know the process.

From historic mysteries

According to the New Scientist, Ward negotiated with several leading organizations. Boeing, NASA, and the British Department of Defence all held talks with Ward. It seemed Ward was more concerned that he might not be able to protect himself in a litigation battle. He did maintain the utmost faith in Starlite. However, trying to broker the right deal for himself gave him the unwanted reputation as an unreliable negotiator. Supposedly, he asked for a £1 million one day but upped that price tenfold the following day.

What is Prestressed Concrete?

"And, of course, I built a demo to show how this works" ~ Grady, 4:10 into the above video

The most wonderful part of the Practical Engineering series of videos is the models that Grady makes to illustrate his lessons.

Of course, he's clearly got a heck of a shop around his house to be able to make those models.

How Does a Touchstone Work?

Personally, I prefer aqua reqia to aqua fortis, but that's just me...

I love the idea of just scraping metal on a barely rough surface in order to identify the metal by comparison with a standard.       

Might want to get myself a touchstone to try that out.

Conquering Clear Glass

Just add borax...

No matter how many times I hear how borax is used, I am constantly amazed that there are still more ways to use borax - in the home and in industry.

The above video - from the series called How to Make Everything, a sort of YouTuber's Toaster Project - is the current (as of December when I wrote this entry, I work ahead if at all possible) status check-in on Andy's attempt to make a camera...which requires making a lens...which requires making glass...which apparently requires learning how to make toothpaste.

Man, I can't even make a sandwich...

World-first: Bio-bricks from urine

Source - https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2018-10-24-world-first-bio-bricks-from-urine

Somebody needs to drink more water.

But clearly nobody needs to come up with a more awesome idea than making fertilizer and 'cement' blocks from urine.

Some civil engineering grad students from Cape Town, South Africa have developed a process of taking urine - currently only male urine because “At the moment we’re only dealing with urine collection from male urinals because that’s socially accepted. But what about the other half of the population?” - precipitating out a solid fertilizer, then using the liquid waste to produce bio-bricks  and a secondary fertilizer.

The initial precipitation at the fertilizer-producing urinal uses calcium hydroxide to precipitate out calcium phosphate, a solid fertilizer.

Source - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213343718306043

After that, the remaining liquid heads to a secondary processing.

The bio-bricks are created through a natural process called microbial carbonate precipitation. It’s not unlike the way seashells are formed, said Lambert’s supervisor Dr Dyllon Randall, a senior lecturer in water quality engineering.

In this case, loose sand is colonised with bacteria that produce urease. An enzyme, the urease breaks down the urea in urine while producing calcium carbonate through a complex chemical reaction. This cements the sand into any shape, whether it’s a solid column, or now, for the first time, a rectangular building brick.

And the strength of the material is simply dependent on time and concentration of urea.

The strength of the bio-bricks would depend on client needs. 

“If a client wanted a brick stronger than a 40% limestone brick, you would allow the bacteria to make the solid stronger by ‘growing’ it for longer,” said Randall. “The longer you allow the little bacteria to make the cement, the stronger the product is going to be. We can optimise that process.”

The liquid waste from the bio-brick production, then, is further processed into a second fertilizer.

That's amazing, turning a waste product into three useful. As the article says, "[t]he overall scheme would effectively result in zero waste, with the urine completely converted into three useful products."

I'm guessing there are a lot of scientists who are pissed that they didn't come up with this idea themselves.

(I'm sorry...)

This improbable membrane can trap flies in a jar - and odor in a toilet

Well that's just cool.

The membrane described above can block small particles but allow larger particles through, a thoroughly non-intuitive method of filtering.

Then again, water is weird. It holds together, 'healing' itself via intermolecular forces. In this case, the addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate - something I've heard called sodium lauryl sulfate - allows the water membrane to be penetrated and then come back together.

In order to break through the membrane, particles need enough momentum (mass times velocity, natch) to break through the membrane, so larger particles have an easier time to get through. Smaller particles, then, have to be moving far faster if they're going to break through.

And automatically, people go straight to the possibility of keeping the poop smell in a toilet.

Because everyone poops.

ASM International "Roof-of-Sky" Video

I love visiting the ASM dome in Materials Park (or Novelty), OH every spring for summer camp training. It's an opportunity to see old friends, but it's also a chance to see one of world's largest free-standing geodesic dome (g'head, search out proof that it isn't). The ASM Headquarters is just a beautiful place.



Check out some beautiful photos or a video or two...

Source - Cleveland.com

ASM 100th Anniversary Video

Not a ton of material science content here, just a bit of background about ASM, the former American Society of Metals. (Now they're ASM like how Kentucky Fried Chicken was just KFC for a while.)

I'll admit that I don't use ASM in the same way that most of the ASM members do. I have a few of their reference book on my shelves at school, but they're not things I refer to with any regularity at all. I'm not looking for the detailed, professional, industrial knowledge that most of their members are. Instead, I'm thrilled to be a part of the ASM Materials Education Foundation, the branch that looks to share out its knowledge with K-12 students and teachers.

But that branch wouldn't exist without ASM International.

I'm a little late in posting this 100th anniversary video from 2013, but I'm game for a reason to eat cake even if I'm late to the party.

Monoclinic Sulfur demonstration

It's always fascinating to me to see video from a summer teacher camp that I am not running because I only, really know how my camps run.

I know my jokes, my patter, my schtick, my bits. I don't know how most other folks run camp - a few of them, admittedly, but not many (Rebecca Heckman, Caryn Jackson, David McGibney, Debbie Goodwin, Andy Nydam, Cynthia Hummel, Brian Wright - thanks to all of you, by the way).

Above, we see Priscilla Oshikiri and Justin Sickles (Priscilla is in the purple, by the way) performing the sulfur demonstration - at least the monoclinic part. The amorphous part is below.

I'm always open to sharing videos from our camps. If you happen to have any to share, please link to them.

Cave of Crystals | 100 Wonders | Atlas Obscura

Yes, there is are a couple of hour-long videos about Naica cave, but sometimes we just don't have an hour to devote to that world's largest monocrystaline growths.

That's kind of why a video like this one - just under 3 minutes long - can be nice. It's a quick exploration of the Naica crystal cave, drained and being explored as of the time of these photos (no video, just stills).

I'd been hearing for a while that the caves 'were going to be refilled', but I just found - in a quick research bit - that the BBC reported in 2014...

In her discussion with reporters [Dr Penelope Boston] lamented the fact that the crystal complex had become flooded following the recent cessation of mining activities, preventing any further access. 

"It is tear inducingly beautiful down there. I wrote several poems about it actually.

What is Materials Science and Engineering?

Dude, we're shooting here.

At 1:34, some guy starts to walk into the shot on the far left edge.

I don't know why, but that bothered me. I feel like they could have re-shot that clip easily enough.

And at 2:30, what purpose is being served by melting that penny?

The video is, admittedly, an advertisement for Iowa State's MS&E program, but it's a nice, general introduction to what material science students study at university.

Chicago Train Operator Sets Railway Lines on Fire

That's frickin' weird to see, man...

The news this morning reported that it was so cold in Chicago that the train operators were setting the tracks on fire with kerosene-soaked ropes.

I don't know that the exact details there are correct. The video below shows the operators in Alaska using a product call FireSnake. Their website says...

80M010 is based on a special alcohol blend modified with cellulose thickeners and enhanced with special fibers for maximum heat output. Upon combustion, the special fiber material used in this product releases nitrogen, water and carbon dioxide 

.... 

FireSnake® is a smokeless, easy to use, safe replacement for the old repair method of diesel rope.

So apparently the old version is diesel-soaked rope, and now there's a 'better' commercial product.

Either way, the issue that's relevant for us at hand is that metal contracts when it's cold. That means if it's cold enough, the train tracks will actually contract and separate from each other. To repair the lines, the workers need to first get the tracks to expand enough to join. Then they can do the repair.

Hot metal = expand...cold metal = contract/shrink

Colored golds

Yeah, I don't really understand that graph/diagram/visualization.

I was looking around on the web about the various alloys of gold that can produce different colors and happened upon that diagram up there.

So, here's my question, how do I read the graph?

Like, let's say I wanted to make a gold that would be as yellow as the Y in the word yellowish on that diagram.

My reading of that alloy is that it would be about 55% silver,  50% copper, and about 50% gold.

That math doesn't seem to add up.

Can anybody tell me how to read this graph?

Sure, there's a bunch of info on the Colored Gold wikipedia page, but nothing there is terribly helpful either.

Touching plasma - Smarter Every Day 193

Let's get this out of the way first. The video isn't remotely about 'touching plasma'. Yes, somebody touches plasma at 9:30, but it's not elaborated on or explained in the least. The title is oddly useless, something I haven't seen from Destin before.

On the other hand, the video does have three minutes of high quality material science content early. From 1:05 through 4:20, Destin goes to Dr. Kavan Hazeli's lab and shows some of the testing of '3d lattice structures printed by NASA.' They're looking at ridiculously lightweight materials, trying to see how much metal they can take away (though it's created via additive manufacturing) while still leaving the 'material strong enough to withstand a space environment.'

We get to see an impact test as the researchers explore the difference in 'quasistatic' pressure and impact pressure tests to the materials. The sample we see tested in nearly pulverized and comes out 'perfectly flat' and hot.

It's like energy is transferred or something.

The rest of the video sees Destin visit two more labs - testing ion thrusters and exploring the fluid dynamics around a butterfly's wing - but they aren't nearly as material science interesting. Watch 'em or don't. Admittedly, at 4:55, Destin announces, 'are you not entertained,' and I'll admit that I'm not. Meh...

It's probably because I don't really understand what's happening with the ion thruster.

Inside the 23-Dimensional World of Your Car's Paint Job

We're continuing this week with a little more on the art theme. It's a very different kind of art from last week's memory metal flower, but there are still pedals involved. (groan)

Wired magazine has a brilliant article detailing the incredible process of color matching the paint on a repaired part of a car to the paint on the rest of the car. At first blush, the process seems awfully simple - pick up a can of the paint used to paint the car originally. Things are a little more complicated than that, however, as no repair shop is going to stock 50,000-60,000 different paints (the number of car colors on the road according to the article), no car in need of repair looks exactly like it did when it first rolled off the production line. and because the original paint job on most cars involves twenty three different dimensions to the color - sparkles, coarseness, red, blue, green, angle, diffuse coarseness, and so on.

The knowledge and skills involved in color matching are absolutely mind-boggling. There's an art to it all.

Shape Memory Alloy demonstration

Let's start the year off with a little art.

Because the video is so short, I'll simply copy the description from YouTube,

Shape memory alloys are materials that are able to 'remember' their shape under different conditions. Here we show an example where the petals of the flower are made from a shape memory alloy that have been conditioned to a shape representing closed petals at room temperature and an open petal shape at higher temperatures, achieved using a hot air blower. The flower can then be made to open and close by heating and cooling. Whilst this is an interesting example of how shape memory alloys can be used in art, they can also be used in a range of engineering applications from medical devices to automotive valves.

For more information on studying metallurgy and materials science at the University of Birmingham, please go to: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/metallurgy-materials/index.aspx