Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work and Never Will Work

 

[T]he plastics industry has waged a decades-long campaign to perpetuate the myth that the material is recyclable. This campaign is reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s efforts to convince smokers that filtered cigarettes are healthier than unfiltered cigarettes.

The above quote is from Judith Enck and Jan Dell's article in The Atlantic and lays it all out fairly straight forwardly.

We use too many man-made polymers.

Man-made polymers are bad for us.

They can't really be recycled.

I'm pretty sure that Everything Into Oil was nothing more than a pipe dream.

COLD HARD SCIENCE: SLAPSHOT Physics in Slow Motion - Smarter Every Day 112

For me, the big payoffs in this video come from the high speed videography at 2:30 and again at 5:20. Seeing the composite hockey stick flex and store up energy then spring forward even ahead of the player's hand when that stored energy is release is just gorgeous and shows the advantages of composite materials in sports as compared to older, wooden sticks.

Plus, I'm down for just about any video that Destin posts.

Materials Science vs Material Science

Is it 'material science' or 'materials science'?

According to English Language & Usage Stack Exchange, it's primarily materials science because material science already meant something else when the field of study came into being in the 1910s.

In an answer submitted by user Peter Shor...

It's materials science because material is also an adjective. The phrase material science, as opposed to, say, spiritual science, was used before people started studying the science of materials. Consider this Ngram:

If you search in Google Books for "material science" before 1910, you get hits like

What does material science know about things of the soul? The world of spirit outside material science. Material science takes up the objects of the world and interprets them. 

Presumably, the science of materials was named materials science to avoid confusion with this phrase.

I don't know what Peter Shor's bona fides are, but it sounds like a good answer to me. 

It's a pile of mining waste. Want to go skiing on it?

Typically mining tailing piles are not destinations to see.

They're usually filled with heavy metals and lots of other pollutants, but this pile is mostly inert sand...and it's an off-season ski slop.

That's pretty cool. 

What Actually Happened to the Concorde

This video didn't answer the question I was thinking it would. I was thinking it would go through the economics of why the Concorde no longer flies. Instead it went through the failure analysis following the only fatal Concorde crash, that of Air France 4590 on July 25, 2000. That does appear, however, to have been the nail in the coffin of the Concorde's commercial life.

The first five or so minutes of the video introduce the crash and the beginning analysis. At 5:00, then, the first clues emerge in the form of a sound recording of a burst tire and a remnant of irregularly-drilled metal strapping among the wreckage. At 10:00, the materials testing gets into fracture mechanics to determine how and when the fuel tank ruptured.

This might not be the best video to watch if you have a fear of flying, but it's fascinating to see how much can be discovered from how little was recovered.