Flamethrower vs Aerogel

They killed that poor kid's flamethrower.

That sucks.

Dr Derek got himself some big sheets of aerogel and stood behind them while a makeshift flamethrower went full bore at the sheet from barely a feet or two away.

I think aerogel might be a pretty good insulating material.

I may need to get myself some of that stuff...and not to let Rebecca get ahold of it.

To me, the demonstration after the blow torch - around 6:20 or so - is more impressive. Dr Derek touches a piece of metal that is mostly coated with a 1mm thick layer of aerogel. The coating is at 125 C, hot enough to boil water. Dr Derek then rests his hand on the aerogel coating without harming himself - because the aerogel does such a spectacular job of not allowing the thermal energy to be transferred to his fingers.

He also shows a few other commercial uses of aerogel to keep really cold things really cold - like pipes carrying liquid natural gas in industrial settings...and deep undersea insulating oil pipelines.

My closing take-away is that this stuff is miraculous.