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Transparent Concrete
rakerman writes: "The Economist reports in How to see through walls that development is underway on translucent concrete, with hopes of eventually developing transparent concrete. Can transparent aluminium be far behind?"
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He has visions of cities that glow from within, and buildings whose windows need not be flat, rectangular panes, but can be arbitrary regions of transparency within flowing, curving walls.
That sure sounds remarkably like Apple's philosophy...
I seriously doubt we will ever see transparent aluminum. In order for it to succceed, the atoms would have to be aligned in a crystaline matrix. Such a matrix would likely create a hard, yet weak substance.
It would have much strength, yet it would fracture easily. Its called "Modulus of elasticity"; something certain steels(H11 namely) holds in spades. I doubt even if it could be produced, people would find it of much use.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Think of this way... advanced natural selection.
The only question is, will the birds die off before an effective way for them to naigate arises...
The real problem with transparent building materials is that people inside want to control the transparency, just look at your own home, you got curtains and shades on all(most) windows.
:)
:)
A classic problem with new hightech buildings (Glass 'n metal) is climate control, its nice to be able to look outside, but if the sun is starring you right back its not that fun. So you tint the windows
The next problem is that in those buildings the light that gets through is not white light (sunlight) anymore, and working in that kind of buildings can cause depressions very similary to winter depressions.
Remember: Architects are just building nerds
Can material described in the article really be called "concrete"?
As it is written there its only resemblance to concrete is that it consists of coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and binding agent. But this is not a recipe for concrete only - also for other materials. Also, Dr. Price's secret material can't be poured or produced on site - one the main reasons of traditional concrete popularity. It would probably find its use in form of blocks of translucent material, that could be used to enhance possibilities for architects but what Dr. Price is trying to do is another building material, which is very interesting indeed but can hardly be called "concrete".
Please see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Scotty gave a company the secret of transparent aluminum in exchange for a tank large enough to hold two whales.
I have to agree here -- I don't think that crystalline structure alone will confer transparency on a material, especially metal. It has firstly to do with the properties of the atoms and molecules themselves, and maybe second the crystalline nature.
Why, then, would glass be transparent? Glass has a most uncrystalline structure!
and buildings whose windows need not be flat, rectangular panes, but can be arbitrary regions of transparency within flowing, curving walls.
Sorry, but that is already possible.
A researcher at the university of Delft has developed a way to create twisted glass allowing for twisted buildings.
A dutch article can be found here. Take a look at the images if you don't understand the text
"We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
And each window needs to be constructed elsewhere, shipped, and placed in a hole that is sunk in a wall after the wall is in place. In conrete construction, this entails a good deal of work to do successfully and the benefits to doing so are limited. In fact, in doing so, the insulative value of concrete is often lessened. By having a "window" of transparent concrete, our structure sacrifices less of its insulation and the work required to place them is lessened. Furthermore, transparent concrete would allow for even more artistic placement of windows in modern architecture, since the window could be load-bearing.
Even if the engineers only managed to make the concrete translucent, it would still be of some advantage.
Pax Digitalia
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Just imagine what Steve Jobs would do with his iMac cases...
Don't quote me on this.
Mod me as off topic if you like, but that movie was released in the grand era of the Commodore Amiga. I vaguely remember reading in one of the Amiga rags that they had originally intended to use an Amiga as the computer, but Commodore was behind in their shipments of the A2000. Some nutball decided that they were going to satisfy requests in the order they were received. Obviously, Star Trek producers weren't interested in waiting. I wonder if somebody got fired over that decision.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
It's a conspiracy I tell you!!!
Microsoft have been developing transparent concrete for a while now..
fine aggregate = Windows CE
course aggregate = Windows ME
binding agent = Windows NT
Mix them all together and you get
Microsoft CE-ME-NT
Have you ever looked at concrete? Its filled with lots of air pockets. It's like the fractal sphere packing problem.
The problem is agravated by the material itself. As concrete cures it generates gas. most of it never reaches the surface to disapate. Therefore; causing voids to apear in the final material. Vibrating the concrete before it's fully cured helps but is never perfect.
Even if you used rosin as the glue and glas beads as the aggregate, you would still have bubbles. As any POVRAY user would tell you you can never get a perfect merge like that in real life.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819