Glassy Metal

[Jammydodger]

Interesting (sort of new) material.
this part comes from the pages of (April Issue of Discovery Mag)

Glassy Metal
Harder, stronger, and better- the material of the future.

The wispy metal strip in my hands is 1 inch wide and as thin as aluminum foil.
"Try to tear it," says William Johnson, a materials science professor at Caltech in Pasadena.
I pull- first gentily, but soon with all my might. No go.

"See if you can cut this," suggest Johnson. Handing me a mirror-bright piece of same metal. Its an inch longer, a qquarter inch wide, and as thin as a dime. I bear down with a pair of heavy duty bolt cutters. The metal wont cut. I try again with all my might, Again nothing.

But the most amazing act in this show is yet to come.

"Watch," says Johnson. From a height of about two feet, A steel ball is dropped onto a brick-size chunk of this glassy metal. The ball bounced and bounced, For one minute and 17 seconds. If it would have been any other metal it would have been thump, thump,thump, and then stop.


Me again, here's a good article on the subject - http://www.e4engineering.com/story.aspx?uid=da63d9ba-c216-4c75-9548-9b0be096ea96

It sounds very similar 2 the "alleged" material found at roswell.
I don't know what is more disturbing a conclusion, that Roswell was an ET vehicle crash or that our government has had this stuff since at least 1947...and the public is that far behind.

 

[FoxDie]

It sounds very similar 2 the "alleged" material found at roswell.
I don't know what is more disturbing a conclusion, that Roswell was an ET vehicle crash or that our government has had this stuff since at least 1947...and the public is that far behind.

That's what I was going to say. Sounds like some crazy stuff

 

[ductonius]

This is one of the two areas where metalurgy is starting to heat up again. From the mid 1800's on we've had relativly little development in metals. Sure, we've made some incredably hard steel (like damascus steel) but other than making some metals harder and some softer we've really had no development.

Now we've got glassy metal and shape memory alloys both developed to a point where they can be used in commercial products.

It will be really neat to see what can be done with these new metals once thier cost comes down more. Since the glassy metals generally have great elasticity any part that might be subjected to sudden shocks can be reduced in weight and increased in durability by making it out of glassy metal. Any part that needs to be deformed would also benifit from shape memory alloys since all you need to do to repair them is apply heat.

 

[[Matt]]

cut the roswell crap...

 

[Raziaar]

Boggles the mind to think of the applications for such a material.

 

[Maui]

THAT is how the stider takes all those AT rockets...

 

[Bad^Hat]

Cool, how long till they start making cymbals out of it?