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Transparent Aluminium
Lynx writes "As the german magazine Spiegel reports, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies have developed a transparent tile made from aluminium oxide pellets baked at 1200C. The material is very hard, and could be used as bulletproof windows." Use the fish.
didnt scotty make this in one of the Star Trek films? I want some for my PC case.
I didn't really think that they would actualy do it. I hope this isn't the german version of april fools :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
otey oten day - o
otey oten oten day
fattening up our tape - worms!
Ha! That guy finally figured out those equations Scotty gave to him back in Star Trek IV! Another technological breakthough thanks to good 'ol Scotty.
...with some transparent concrete to build a transparent house! Now people who want to live in a "glass" house don't have to worry about throwing things at each other! Oh, but they still have to worry about being naked...
Sorry. I should have read the blurb more carefully.
This isn't transparent aluminum; this is a transparent aluminum oxide. That is just not the same thing as aluminum anymore then water is Hydrogen gas, or table salt is the same thing as Sodium metal or Chlorine gas (both very harmful chemicals, sodium can explode when it comes in contact with water, and Chlorine can kill you in a few breaths, yet we eat salt all the time)
And secondly we have known about aluminum based compounds for a long time, in fact, longer then we have known about Aluminum or even about elements in general. Alum, the compound from which aluminum gets it's name (and which we extract aluminum from) has been known to man for ages and is, in fact, transparent.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Isn't that like rubies?
The first sentance of the second paragraph should read: "And secondly we have known about aluminum based transparent compounds for a long time"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Btw, The artical indicates that this material is 3 times as strong as steal, making it far stronger then pure, regular, opaque, Aluminum metal.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
On how much I have to say.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No. He just showed them the molecula structure. He didn't tell them how to manufacture it.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
> this material is 3 times as strong as steal,
No, it says it is three times as _hard_ as hardened steel, which isn't the same thing (though they are related). Considering that corundum (i.e. ruby, sapphire) is made of aluminium oxide, that isn't that surprising.
Forming that hard material into tiles of unspecified but obviously reasonable toughness and strenth while keeping it transparent is the impressive bit.
rant
This would be useful for windows of buses and trains in areas where they tend to get vandalized.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
you are referring to this script: http://kithfan.org/work/transcripts/three/street2. html
P.S. Considering the number of people who are confused about the difference between silicon and silicone, it's not surprising some can't tell the difference between aluminium and alumina (aluminium oxide).
(Aluminum/aluminium is just US/international spelling. Looking at the original German article it uses "Aluminiumoxid" where the fish translation has alumina.)
rant
incompetence
I saw tranceparent house at TV news program in Japan. (Sorry I've forgotten where the house is.)
A young woman lives in it.
The designer of that house said "This is art", but I don't think so.
Some neighbors were watching to naked girl...
That is so amazing, I didn't know.
.... oooh I wonder what sunglasses made of blue sapphire would be like ?
What are the advantages over toughened glass ?
Bitter and proud of it.
klerck? charleston, south carolina?
let out a giant yawn.
Alumina being transparent or strong is hardly new. Although the bullet proof glass thing is pretty funny. Alumina is not tough, it may be strong, and even greatly stronger than steel should we be talking about specific strength, but it is not tough at all. And I don't know about you, but the last thing I was between me and a bullet is a sheet of something that will shatter with countless sharp edges to cut me to ribbons.
I'm sure there are a great many chemical concerns that would be thrilled to tell you all about their alumina powders should you care to ask. But trust me, until we can do with alumina what clams can do with chalk the most interesting thing one is likely to do with alumina is make a crucible.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I can walk around in public with my aluminum foil hat and not look stupid anymore!
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
...when I go outside wearing this piece of clothing, discussed recently.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
as Babelfish & Co are not really up to it yet, here's my human-made translation of the German article. I'm a German native speaker, but I can't guarantee the English spelling, so take with a grain of salt ;-).
Things in [brackets] are my remarks.
- - - -
Der Spiegel [leading German magazine, a la Times or Newsweek]
February 19, 2002
TRANSPARENT
Armour-like tile protects from projectiles
Researchers in Dresden [German city] have developed transparent and extremely hard tiles. The Pentagon, among others, is fascinated by this material, which can be used to produce e.g. bullet-proof visors.
[PICTURE] picture caption: "transparent Aluminium tile"
America's weapon technicians show interest for an armour-like tile from Dresden. At the "Fraunhofer-Institut für Keramische Technologien" [Fraunhofer institute for ceramics technologies] there, fine-grained aluminium oxide was successfully baked in an oven at 1200 C to produce an extremely hard, transparent material.
A plate sized 10x10 cm (thickness: 1 cm) only weighs about 400 g, but is three times as hard as hardened [tempered?] steel. During shooting trials on behalf of the "Bundeswehrbeschaffungsamt" [federal procurement office] in Koblenz, "outstanding results" were achieved, according to the researcher Andreas Krell.
The tiles are also being examined in the US state of Idaho: The Pentagon is fascinated by the transparency of the material, which can be used to build bullet-proof visors or big windows for armoured personnel carriers [Panzerspähwagen?].
Didn't Scotty give the instructions on how to make it to some guy in Star Trek 4????
ROFL!!!
This is very cool... however it's no more exciting than micrograin metals or some of the amazing things they can now do with micrograin titania.
Micrograin copper for instance conducts like gold, and is nearly as hard as steel (while being much lighter... this is wonderful stuff.)
Micrograin titania, another ceramic, is transparent, significantly harder than steel, as flexible as plastic, lighter than aluminum, and can smile at temperatures that would turn most metals into soup. Some folks who are working diligently on electrolytic extraction for titanium (the process that brought the price of aluminum down, from more precious than gold), believe that micrograin titania could one day make the perfect engine (since it can be cast and sintered directly into useable parts.)
Face it kidlings, the steady march of material science is giving us an incredible boon of new and amazing new stuff to play with... pretty much like the rest of technology knocking on our collective doors. I want to be the first on my block with a Moller Skycar with the transparent titania upgrades.
Moller Skycar; http://www.moller.com/skycar/
Genda B -- I detest Osama bin Laden, a man who is the bigoted, violent, religiously fanatical, spoiled son of a rich oil magnate, who believes he can control the world with the threat of war and destruction. Hey, wait that sounds like somebody else...
Reminds me of "Strange Days"
[car chase, people getting shot at, passenger ducks in seat]
driver/bodyguard: "Don't worry, the car windows are made of bullet resistant glass."
passenger: Bullet RESISTANT? What happened to bullet PROOF?
I'm assuming the Pentagon is interested in this "transparent aluminum" since it provides a cost and/or performance advantage over current "bullet-proof" glass technologies. IIRC, current bullet proof glass is really polycarbonate (or other similar plastic), tempered glass layered with a plastic, or just plain glass that is made REALLY thick.
So, I'm curious and would like to know more than the article gives. How much does it cost compared to other windowing materials? What is its failure mode? (Does it shatter like sheet glass, pebble like safety glass?) I can imagine a near future where a luxury car maker will advertise thier new models with "transparent aluminum windshield, so strong it resists chips, cracks, and small arms fire".
What allows some things to pass light waves through them others to reflect light waves. I understand how reflection and color works. Photons hit the atoms of a substance and the substance obsorbs photons of some wavelengths while other bounce back. The wavelengths of the photons bouncing back are the color that we see. I just don't see how photons can pass all the way through some fairly dense substances. Any one, any one? Buhler?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I noticed my watch (TAG Heuer) has an interesting inscription at the back:
Swiss Made - Saphire Crystal - Water Resitant - 200M - Stailess Steel (which a recent post in slashdot stated stains by the way).
I thought this crystal was was cool when i received this gift watch. But i never thought it was THAT hard or that was used for military applications. And that it is related to Aluminuim is a big suprise to me also (and the fact that you can manufacture saphire is also surprising!).
Description: It's perfectly transparent (100%, like glass) and doesn't get scratches. This watch is 10 years old, yet the crystal is intact and looks "new", no matter how close you look at it.
unfinished: (adj.)
That's truer than you know. Witness this scenario:
Designer babies worldwide are heavily selected to be male, perhaps on a rediculous scale, say 4:1 or more. Fast forward 30 years.
You now have a young male population that has no females, and by the hundreds of millions, even billions if the practice really takes off in the overpopulated 3rd world countries with pressures to produce a male as the first baby.
Now comes some charismatic leader and, well, I hope I'm in the grave by that point.
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
(by the name of George and Gracie?)
I have seen watches with similar inscriptions before and I have always been under the impression that they were talking about the crystal oscillator not the front glass. Quartz crystal is more prominant I believe, I'm not sure the point of using other crystals for the oscillator but I feel pretty certain that you don't have a watch with the front 'glass' made of saphire. prove me wrong if you can, I'd love to know that such a thing exsists.
Can Wonder Woman's invisible jet be far behind?
For the next generation of stealth fighter planes:
- You don't see them on the radar
- You don't see them with your eyes
Only the pilot has to be made transparent as well...
There has been a lot of talk of Hardness vs. Strength. The fish translated the article as saying Hardness, but could this just be a mistranslation? I noticed fish does this sometimes.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
Right!
Oh, wait, this one isn't about computers.. hehe.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
http://www.europastar.com/ESWatch/index.html?watch tech/watchcrystals.html
* Note: in my opinion this was one of the clear ways to distinguish a geek from a nerd in the 70's and early 80's. Geeks read Marvel books like X-Men and Spiderman, and nerds read DC books like Superman and Wonder Woman. Of course this whole distinction changed when the Dark Knight series came out. Being a devoted Frank Miller fan, that was enough for me to become at least publisher neutral when it came to comics
Work for Change & GET PAID!
even billions if the practice really takes off in the overpopulated 3rd world
Why is it that the 3rd world is always thought of as "overpopulated"?
FYI the population density of San Mateo County or Manhattan is greater than that of Bangladesh.
How come we never hear of the overpopulation of those places? Is the problem really too many brown people?
The "overpopulation problem" is simply a way for "liberals" to indulge in guiltless racism.
So, that would make those of us in the US at least spelling it the original way =]
What?
I remember buying a big chunk of single crystal sapphire when we were building a neutron beam at our school's reactor. Sapphire crystals make good fast neutron filters. We got a 3 inch diameter by 6 inch long cylinder of the stuff (which was slightly pink colored when we installed it) for a couple thousand dollars. Cost a lot to have it sliced so it would fit though, heh. So I bet the expensive part of the process would be the machining to make your lenses, not the sapphire itself.
When we took it out of the neutron beam it was brown colored. Strange that sapphire turns brown when irradiated, topaz turns blue, and pearls turn gray.
I worked in a watch shop for a few years. Sapphire crystals are a wonderful thing, but not simply limited to Tag Heuer watches; Movado, Rolex, Panerai, Tissot, Zodiac, and many, many other watches > ~ $500 have a sapphire crystal these days. About the only things that will leave a mark on a sapphire crystal are diamonds, tungsten carbide (often found on industrial grade saws), other rubies and sapphires (though this will take great force), and some of the more exotic peices of marble and formulations of concrete.
For a watch that will look new just about forever (though granted it's a little dressy), Movado has a watch that not only has a sapphire crystal, but the case and bracelet are all made of tungsten carbine (which is actually a little harder than even sapphire (~ 9.1 on the Moh's scale; 10 == diamond, 9 == sapphire). In other words, it's pretty near indestructable.
YOU STUPID, IGNORANT AMERICAN! It was supposed to be spelled as 'aluminium', but when Alcoa first used the metal in its name, it was 'The Aluminum Company of America', so the way you are spelling it is a BIG MISTAKE!!!
Unbreakable beer glass.
As an aficionado of German beer, I'm sure that this will be the first real application. They just want to get the military to pay for some cool toys along the way.
Here's the link that worked for me (same, but without the inner space):
h tech/watchcrystals.html
http://www.europastar.com/ESWatch/index.html?watc
unfinished: (adj.)
(L. alumen, alum) The ancient Greeks and Romans used alum as an astringent and as a mordant in dyeing. In 1761 de Morveau proposed the name alumine for the base in alum, and Lavoisier, in 1787, thought this to be the oxide of a still undiscovered metal.
Wohler is generally credited with having isolated the metal in 1827, although an impure form was prepared by Oersted two years earlier. In 1807, Davy proposed the name aluminum for the metal, undiscovered at that time, and later agreed to change it to aluminum. Shortly thereafter, the name aluminum was adopted to conform with the "ium" ending of most elements, and this spelling is now in use elsewhere in the world.
Aluminium was also the accepted spelling in the U.S. until 1925, at which time the American Chemical Society officially decided to use the name aluminum thereafter in their publications.
What?
I'm not sure we can count on accurate of translationedspecific words in article, however...
I concur that "hardness" and "strength" are not the same thing. Even "strength" has many facets. I'm not sure exactly what property is the most significant in stopping bullets, but I'd imagine it's compressive strength? A breaking window in say, a vehicle, shatters from failure in tensile strength, but bullet creates a local compression failure I would imagine.
If "hardness" stopped bullets would we be nailing DeBeers for all their stockpiled diamonds and using them to make tanks?
(which, btw, would look REALLY awesome I bet - a solid diamond tank!)
I thought they just made clothes for wannabe-yuppie women and fine accessories. Didn't know they were in the materials business :)
.... Alum-inum -or- Alu-mini-um ???
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Yep, Al2O3 (corundum) is the generic term for
m en uId=13
rubies and sapphires and is completely clear
when pure. It is the second-most hardest substance
known to man after the diamond (Vicker's scale 9
to diamond's 10) The artificial variety is often
referred to as 'sapphire crystal' and has been
extensively used in fancy watchmaking to produce
extremely scratch-resistant watch dials. See,
for example, the materials section of rado.com
http://www.rado.com/topFrame.asp?rootMenuId=13&
There are at least two different ways to think about overpopulation. The first is pure density, so many people in so many square miles. That's what you are talking about.
Then there's the birthrate. I believe the us birthrate is something like 2.0(I could be wrong about the exact figure, but I know the sense is right), which means 2 babies born for every 2 people in the country. Some quick thought will realize that this is not enough for population replacement. The replacement birthrate is something like 2.4 live births for every 2 people in the population, because you have people who die before they reproduce, childless couples, etc. In the past 100 years or so, the trend has been that the the more developed the country is, the lower the birth rate. So while a particular county may have a very high population density, the people there are not reproducting at a rate that can sustain that population. The population is sustained through immagration (hence Buchannan's book where he advocates all the white folks getting busy getting busy and pumping out more white kids.) Generally speaking, the more educated you are, the fewer kids you have.
Plus, San Mateo has enough resources available to feed its population. This is not always the case in what are called 3rd world countries.
So while San Mateo has more people per square mile, those people all have a higher standard of living and their population is stable. They aren't necessarily overpopulated for their geographic area. Meanwhile, in a 3rd world country the population is increasing while the standard of living and education is not.
Personally, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea if a random sampling of half the population of the planet never had kids and those that remained had only 1 or 2 kids. Random would remove all possibility of bias. There are too damn many people everywhere.
pronoblem
> the original name of the element was 'Aluminum', but in England they felt it should follow most of the other elements and end in ium, so they changed it to allow a 2nd spelling
e ments/aluminium/history.html).
In English "aluminium" isn't just an allowable second spelling, it is the standard spelling. It's also the internationally agreed IUPAC spelling. (And yes "aluminum" was used before "aluminium". Full history at http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/el
rant
As long as they don't make screen doors of this stuff! Suddenly your dog running into the door isn't usuable footage for "America's Funniest Home Videos" after that severe head trauma
Yeah, now I can redo my kitchen floor with transparent tiles, so I can still see the plywood underneath!
Woohoo!
...but does anybody know if there was any hint this could be done before the movie was made? Either there was some indication this stuff could be made and the writers grabbed onto it, or this is an amazing coincidence, or (and this is the one that I find most intriguing) it was tried because somebody saw the movie and said "hmmmm..."
If that were the case it would be kind of spooky. Just how many "impossible" things are only a few years of research from reality if we only had the idea to try.
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/ele ments/aluminium/history.html says "the name alumium [...] change it to aluminum." which you have to admit is more convincing than "the name aluminum [...] change it to aluminum."
rant
I know that you've been able purchase (fairly cheaply) very large volumes of Monocrystaline Aluminum Oxide from chemical companies with various contaminates (to get Saphires and rubies).
The biggest problem I remember from working with it was getting rid of scratches, and it isn't quite as clear as the polycarbinate shell on the deep sea submersable Alvin. Not that it is easy to scratch (Hardness of 9.2 I think), you just have to use diamonds to polish it.
Soon we can protect our computers from drive by shootings! Why, I just lost my third i386 to one last week.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I thought Scotty gave the process for transparent aluminum to a Bay Area company.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Chris
What? Your defenition of birthrate doesn't make any sense. How are you counting the population? Are you claiming that every year 2 children times the population of the US are born? And that isn't enough for replacement? That's absurd. A much more useful measure would be a ratio of births:deaths. If this was 1:1 that would be no net gain, a ratio of 2:1 would mean the population is growing. to have a shrinking population you would have to have a lower birthrate than deathrate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Feel free to spell and pronounce Aluminium as you like. As long as you change your spelling of Condominium ...
Dresdner researchers developed transparent and extremely hard page frames. By the material, from which visors can firingfixed be manufactured, also the pentagon is fascinated.
A 10 times 10 centimeters large disk (strength: only about 400 gram weigh, are however three times harder 1.0 cm as hardened steel. With firing tests under contract of the German Federal Armed Forces from the Bundeswehr in Koblenz " outstanding results " were obtained, report the researcher Andreas Krell.
Also in the US state Idaho were examined the tiles: The pentagon is fascinated of the transparency of the material, with which firingfixed of visors or large windows of armored reconnaissance vehicles can be built.
His definition does make sense. 2 people born for every 2 people in the country. Not per year, but total. Specifically the average American woman will have about 1.9 children for all of her child-bearing years. And that number seems to be falling. In Italy, the birthrate is 1.1 children. Developing countries, by contrast often have birthrates from 3 to 6 children, although these countries also tend to have higher infant- and child-mortality rates as well.
Sorry about the scale confusion. I ment that there
t ml
r /T haler-9704.html
is no known substance harder than corrundum, but
I was wrong here. There are reports that cubic
boron carbide, some lantanoids or this thing:
http://www.ameslab.gov/news/release/substance.h
Are harder than corundum. The (admittedly very
hard) ceramics you mention are in the 7-9 range,
to my knowledge. Also check out the autonomous
discovery of ultra-hard materials project:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9704/Thale
(uses some sort of neuronal network)
Excuse me while I roll my eyes, but anyone can make sapphire Windows. All you need is some skill with WindowBlinds. ;-)
My life's goal is to get a score of +3!
>
> Now comes some charismatic leader and, well, I hope I'm in the grave by that point.
What, you get pretty fireworks and solve the "too many males and not enough females" problem. Evolution in action ;-)
There have been successeful prototypes on 'invisible planes' around WWII, but the
whole thing was put on back burner. Invisibility
to radar is a lot more important than what you
see in visual part of the spectrum in modern
BVR battlefield environment. However, 'plasma
stealth' techologies ala 'project Aurora' have
the potential for true invisibility (absorbtion
as opposed to reflection ala 'stealth fighter/bomber') in visual range also...
Hmmmmmm
;)
Somebody check SF's parks for cloaked Klingon's ships! They must be somewhere......
Whales are nervous today......dolphins are leaving either. Is something coming?
Sorry....too much LDS
(Beam me up Scotty, but with my pants this time!)
Microsoft claims they just need to patch the hole.
"It would be more like a ban on covalent bonds between carbon and chlorine, which rarely if ever occur in nature and are stable enough to persist for centuries."
Not really true -- halocarbons are actually more common in nature than you think. A number of organisms such as certain fungi and marine algae produce halocarbons containing chlorine, bromine, and iodine. These compounds can range from simple Methyl-type compounds to polycyclic aromatics.
They can also be formed when wood decays in the presence of halogen salts. The lignin portion of wood is basically a polymer of aromatic alcohols, and under the right conditions halogen ions can react to form aromatic halocarbons.
If we didn't load nudity so much, we'd realize that our puffy, flabby, furry hides are pretty normal. Really---if you're having nudity issues, go to a gym and see that even people who work out occasionally are kinda blah-looking by pornstar standards.
Err, not "Ron Jeremy" standards. I think we can all live up to those, with the exception of the ten-inch cock requirement.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If you're into that sort of thing, which is most definately cool. You should look at some of the stuff with spider silk. There's a company that genetically engineer goats to express the stuff spider silk is made of in their milk. (one would assume the golden orb spider) Then they get fetta cheese and spider silk on a reasonable scale. (I don't know if fetta cheese comes from goats, but I do like the way it just rolls off the tongue, so if you're a cheese expert feel free to interject).
I would also like to think that our military personel have something a little more substantial that alumina, perhaps silicon carbide, or better yet a ceremet of silicon carbide and nickle (but maybe that'd be too heavy). Either way in a kevlar vest, their opaque and not windows. I think Titanium Boride has been used for bullet proof vests too.
A'ight, yo.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
How many children a woman has during her life is not really a usefull statistic when trying to determine population growth. It is much more usefull to compare birth and death rates.
According to the CIA Factbook:
Birth rate: 14.2 births/1,000 population (2001 est.)
Death rate: 8.7 deaths/1,000 population (2001 est.)
So for each death approximately 1.6 children are born. This would indicate population growth.
The fact that 2.8 children are born for "every two people" does not tell us anything about population growth. Depending on life expectencies, infant mortality rates and sex distribution of the population that could indicate growth or shrinking.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
> I'm not sure we can count on accurate of translationedspecific words in article, however...
> I'm not sure exactly what property is the most significant in stopping bullets
Well, the article clearly uses the word "hardness", not "strength" (I do speak German), and given the context in which it is used (research into bullet-stopping materials), I'd say it's pretty clear that the bullet-stopping type of hardness is meant here. If it had the properties of jello WRT stopping bullets, I don't think they'd waste their time on it.
Hardness increases with toughness not necessarily vis versa.
Think of it roughly in these terms:
A hardness contest between two materials consists of trying to scratch one with the other. The one scratched is harder.
A toughness contest between two materials consists of trying to break one material with the other. The one broken wins.
Seastead this.
Although they removed the page from their website with their recent redesign, you can still access it through Google's cache:
: www.timedomain.com/Technology/optics/metal.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:s6W9amqY19IC
There are some fifty posts talking about Scotty introducing invisible aluminum to 20th century earth in Star Trek IV" yet somehow the one post on Wonder Woman, who clearly was using invisible aluminum 50 years ago is modded offtopic? Flamebait I could have understood, but not offtopic.
Metals made transparent by photonic layer structure:
http://eetimes.com/story/OEG19991108S0095
This is much more useful than transparent armor,
IMHO, if it can indeed be applied to photonic
band-gap filtering...
Most Rado watches are made from ultra-hard
ceramics also: www.rado.com
I don't think it is either a world shocker if anyone discovers that transparent aluminum was being researched at the time of the movie, or if it was merely mentioned as 'possible' by a chemical engineer or such. While many will enjoy yelling about 'life imitating art' they really should be saying 'life imitating art that previously imitated life'
It is related to (and in some ways because of) this factor that older sci fi shows often seem silly in respects of look and feel of items that where so futuristic but yet we seem to have now. A bad example of this is when people asked about the problems of making Enterprise both fit in the continuity (obviously they decided it was better to scrap continuity) yet also not look totally ridulous from our prespective of real world technology. *that is not the bad example* The bad example of this was with communicators, where many people pointed out that modern cell phones are smaller and sexier than the communicators presented in the original series (especially the pilot). However, they forgot that in the series, it was not a short range, relayed radio (as in radio band of EM), but was in fact 'subspace' communications that is purely theoretical (despite our recent findings, it still baffles researchers). So, if we are talking about an entirely new communication system that requires no relay system. *remember, without a ship, satellite, tower, relay or other device, people could use their communicators to talk to other people thousands of miles away, even through the planets surface (no line of sight)*
It is err... fascinating however.
San Mateo has enough resources available to feed its population.
No, it has the money to buy food and water from other sparsely populated areas in the US. Just disrupt civilization, motorized transportation, or the belief that pieces of green paper are actually worth something, and any American city would be in worse shape than Bangladesh... On the average, the US is fairly lightly populated, but that's averaging farmlands with one family per square mile, deserts and mountains with almost no permanent human residents, and densely populated urban areas together..
I thought Slashdot was an American site. In America we say a-LOO-mi-num...and ketchup.
If I'm groking this correctly
It is not possible to grok something incorrectly.
Either you grok it, or you do not. If you do, then it cannot be incorrect.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Almost there...
l yn ews/tablefusion990324.html
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/dai
Hehehe,
Ex-Misltech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Go home Idiot. Your village misses you.
Alumina (aluminum oxide) is no more "transparent aluminum" than a sandy beach is my CPU. You need to get some basic science into your thick head Hemos.
And why haven't you written any more "Nano" stories lately? Reality catching up with you?
I'm clueless to know either way, stupid American schools.
It wasn't the American Medical Association! Sorry. I got that confused with the American Council on Science and Health.
Not the American Medical Association!
Go to a company like Kurt Lesker and look up "Sapphire viewports". They're mostly used for their optical properties, like when a quartz viewport would block the wrong wavelengths of light.
BTW, hardness doesn't make it unbreakable. Glass is harder than steel, but it doesn't stop soft lead bullets, does it?
This would be used to create a whole new generation of Apple paraphenalia.
The new: iCar!
The exciting: iBoat!
The unbelieveable: iRoof!
The possibilities are endless, with our strong, clear steel!
It's been a long time.
It's also the internationally agreed IUPAC spelling.
Bah! Since when do we Americans care about international standards?
Again, it depends. The birth/death rate is another way of looking at it, but it doesn't necessarily take into account recent rapid immagration. Or the fact that only a small percentage of people in a population are capable of giving birth at any one time.
Let's say there's an island with 1000 people on it.
If the island is suddenly discovered and a lot of people move in, say 1000 immagrants (50/50 split) are more likely to be younger (say under 50) and so they move in and have children. If the immagrants only have 1 child a piece after moving there, the death rate remains the same or goes up slightly (due to accidents), where the birth rate doubles. But the island's population will not grow that much over time because the new people do not replace themselves.
Fun with statistics!
Transparent aluminum? I thought Scotty invented that in Star Trek 4!
Well, my breakfast burrito is rapidly congealing, so I'd better get my fat ass out of my bedroom in my parents' basement if I'm gonna make it to the SCA meeting! Whoops! There goes my artificial plastic Klingon forehead! Gotta buy more adhesive...
Scotty! Aluminum! Hahahaaaha! Live long and prosper! I grok Frodo!
well, if you remember, isolinear chips didn't come around till star trek:tng. the episode "relics" even brings this up. that's the episode with scotty and the dyson sphere. getting off the transporter pad, scotty asks a question about one of the panels, and giordi says they replaced the old crystal memory cards with isolinear chips. so according to the trek timeline, those are another 300 years off.
wow, i'm a dork
I haven't taken chemistry in like 8 years, but doesn't "oxide" mean O2? Dihydrogen Oxide to me sounds like 2H02. Or maybe it means H2O2, but for some reason I'm thinking the prefix "di-" is chemically different than the suffix "-ide" (thus 2H instead of H2)...but I couldn't tell you exactly what the difference is. Any chem majors out there?
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
Very common. Any decently good watch has a sapphire face. Why? It's really hard, so it doesn't scratch easy.
;)
My Esquire has one... so did my Luminox...
(Oh.. regarding those Luminox navy seal dive watches..... they are indestructuble, for sure.
Just don't wear one to bed.. I woke up and found one of the prongs that hold sthe strap pin in had sheared right off the main housing. GO figure.
Waterproof to 200 meters, used by navy seals, can take a hell of a beating.. but don't ware it to bed
Advice to slashdot readers: stay in school until it begins to work.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
this sounds like the first step need to obtain opaque copper for Tinfoil Hat Linux.
From the readme:
If at all possible, boot THL on a laptop & disconnect all external cables, including the power & mouse. Turn off nearby radios, including cell phones and microwaves. Put yourself and the computer in a well grounded opaque copper cube. Download your tinfoil hat plans from http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html. Boot the floppy....
Actually, this material IS different from Saphire windows. It's old technology ( fusing metal powders under heat and pressure to make gears for instance ) applied to new materials ( Alumina ).
First Saphire is grown in a molten solution of special salts, and comes out as one large inflexible crystal. The growing of the crystals can take a lot of time. The size of said crystals are limited.
This alumina oxide panel is made from fine nanometer size particles of alumina that are sintered under high temperature and pressures. It turns out that materials made in such ways can have different properties than their bulk counterparts. For one thing, being made from essentially fused particles, crack propagation is a lot less. So normally shatter prone Alumina saphire now becomes more shatter resistant and tougher. In some cases, even flexible ceramics can be made if made from fused nanometer scale particles. The magic is in the gaps, interfaces and spaces between the particles. Particle size, temperature, and pressure can yield vastly different results. I wouldn't be suprised if they develop many specialized variations. Also, since the technology for sintering using metals is old, one can see alumina being used to replace metal in certain high temp settings.
This powder sintering has been done in the past with ceramics. but the grain sizes were too large, and you simply made large brittle ceramics. It just became a way of making ceramic parts w/o having to deal with slurries, and wet casting and then firing them. The advancement of making ceramics into nanometer size powders has changed this dramatically. The resulting behaviour of sintered nanometer scale powder ceramics is vastly different. Some are even FLEXIBLE!
So imagine, for an instant, FLEXIBLE shatter resistant alumina windows with the strength of 3x that of steel.
And wait for more fun...
Nanoscale composites. You get all sorts of cool fun when you mix powders from different substances together, and anneal them.
Um, that would also assume the jet turbine, which is full of white glowing fire, is transparent. I see a little flaw here.....
Strength - A property of materials under elastic deformation, meaning the degree to which the material bends under load, and then springs back to its original shape. At sufficiently high loading, the material deforms plastically, meaning it stays bent. Strong materials deflect very little under load (low strain per unit stress), and can take high loads before plastic deformation occurs.
Toughness - A property of materials that contain microcracks or other fracture-inducing characteristics. Such flaws cause localized increases in stress levels and thereby cause fractures to expand until the material fails catastrophically. This is the mechanism underlying stress-corrosion cracking and fretting fatigue. Tough materials do not have high localizes stress at crack tips, and can tolerate microcracks without catastrophic propagation and failure.
Hardness - The strength of a material at its surface. Measured empircally by poking it with sharp objects. Hard materials resist scratches and dents. But whether they deform (elastically or plastically) has nothing to do with their hardness. It has to do we their bulk strength.
The url for babelfish is actually:
http://babelfish.altavista.com, not http://babelfish.altavista.net as reported.
This research facility focuses on ceramic-related activity. Given that I am by profession very familiar with the process involved in the manufacture of such materials, I can venture an interesting guess.
Porcelain and ceramic tiles get their strength from 2 processes: exposure to pressure from a vertical hydraulic press, and subsequent firing (baking) of the tile.
1200 degrees is not very far off the temperatures at which the firing curves for commercial mass produced porcelain lie.
I thus assume that the difference lies in the pressure at which the pellets are pressed. It's got to be a LOT higher than the pressures used in the commercial porcelain/ceramic manufacture environ.
And anything will become harder when you compact it. Look at how diamonds are formed.
So essentially, what we are saying here is " Hey, we took some transparent stuff, compacted it really tight then fired it, and whee, we got ourselves a slab of very hard transparent stuff"...
Where's the innovation?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
"harder" should, of course, have been "less hard".
Seastead this.
Nonsense! Everybody knows that the nudity taboo was invented by Gapchaneloren IX in 1000 BC in order to help out the garmet industry!
got it from scotty in exchange for enough thick plexiglass to make a large fish tank for the whale. Unfortunately the plexi company went down in the recent crash of the stock market, the guy was fired and was told not to come back in to work before he could get to the formula he left on the mac, and the computer it was sold on ebay. Apparently a german company got the bid, found the formula and worked out the details, and well the result is now on slashdot. :P
Your assumptions are false and misleading. The population density of Bangladesh is nearly one and a half times as high as the population density of San Mateo County.
I won't argue with you about Manhattan, but Bangladesh as a whole has a significantly higher population density than most suburban areas. Bangladesh has 3.69 people *per acre*.
Statistics Follow:
Bangladesh:
Population 131.26 million
Area: 144,000 square kilometers
Conversion of 2.591 km2 per mi2 gives 2,362 persons per square mile living in Bangladesh.
San Mateo County:
Population: 717,866
Area: 449.10 square miles
1,599 persons per square mile in SMC.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
If the material is close to 100% of solid density, then you can put a polymer between a couple of layers of it, just like safety glass. One reason this is big news is that alumina is cheap and available by the tonne. Then again, so is silica.
way off topic and waaay wrong! Numbers of offspring is more a matter of CULTURE than intelligence. I know Mormon families (who are VERY well educated) who have large families (more than 4 kids). So please get a clue before you start spreading your racist bullshit.
Yes, this material is hard, not strong perhaps like steel. That's doesn't mean it might not be useful. Regular glass is also hard but not strong, yet it's used to make shatterproof glass. Many ceramics are very hard/not strong until layered/bonded with something.
Perhaps you'll see a similar development as in conventional layered shatterproof/spallproof glass with layers of transparent aluminum oxide sandwiched with transparent polycarbonate(?) material. Using a combination of something very hard (aluminum oxide) and some way to distribute the energy of a colliding body (the bonded layering material) we may find this application of transparent aluminum oxide produces a very strong, clear barrier material.
Good read but It really doesn't explain how you could use it to say.....
..build a million gallon tank on a starship to transport two humpback whales 200 years into the future in a desperate attempt to save mankind from a strange monolith emitting beached whale sounds.
Jesus....what ever happened to investigative journalism these days? Also, wasn't this guy supposed to speek english?
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
and you'll never see 'em coming.
>I detest Osama bin Laden, a man who is the
>bigoted, violent, religiously fanatical, spoiled
>son of a rich oil magnate, who believes he can
>control the world with the threat of war and
>destruction. Hey, wait that sounds like somebody
>else...
Indeed it does. Especially since Osama is the son of a rich construction magnate, not an oil magnate.
Whence comes this idea that if you're rich and Arab, you're in the oil business? Princess Diana's last boyfriend was rich and Arab, but he was in the department store business...
Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker
Great.
But we already have bulletproof glass. What's so special?
For a ceramic, Alumina is pretty tough, but that's like saying for a 5th grader Todd Peterman is pretty tough. It takes very little to propigate cracks through ceramics. There some stuff that can be done, but ceramics aren't metal. And alumina has always been transparent.
Now this MIGHT be news if they some how got their alumina powders on a nano scale where the alumina crystal grains are smaller than the wavelengths of light, then you'll actually get a relatively tough, and see through material. Not be cause something magical happens on that scale, but because the crack length will be huge, and actually require the formation of a large surface which would take a lot of energy despite the low toughness of the alumina. That would be news. BIG news. At least to me. But that's not what they said.
They said they made a 10cm alumina tile. Big whoop.
They might be able to enhance it by making it like corning wear, but that summery of a press release was clearly too light to provide that kind of detail. Which might have been interesting, although not news.
I would bet that it being transparent means they either used a spectacularly fine powder, or it is basically fully dense as there doesn't appear to be many internal surfaces to scatter light (ie it's not opaque).
Further more, I would bet that the flaw(s) introduced by the bullet would not be what caused it to fail, I would bet that pre-existing flaws near the bullets point of impact would be vastly expanded. Worse yet, the alumina tile might even bounce the bullet off instead of just stop it.
Maybe the news is the simplicity and low cost? Too bad that didn't make it into the news then.
Either way it sounds like it's nothing but a press release for a non-large company that's really happy that they might picked up as a contractor for the Department of Defence.
Yawn. Already, we've given it more consideration that it deserves.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
What? We Americans take international standards very seriously ... so long as they're ANSI compliant ;o)
If this material has useful properties for hardness, tensile strength, energy absorption, etc., Automakers might find it very useful.
Auto Glass is very expensive. A typical (American) Ford Escort with a relatively small windshild will cost about $500.00 while larger windshilds Can cost over $1000.00 (Pontiac Transport Minivan).
If auto windshilds alone could be replaced by this material, not only would it add torsional rigidity (reduction of twist) to the vehicle frame, but it may add visibility.
A-Pillars could be replaced by this material making a wider field of vision.
If I remember correctly, Scotty showed off this stuff in Star Trek IV (The Journey Home)...
It's about time someone got it right!! So we're only about 20 years behind... o well
CoyboyNeal is God
well, if they made the jello though but not hard, it would reflect the bullets. not that bad.
actually, the term "overpopulation" is a reference to the ratio of people to natural resources, not a direct ratio of people to land area. The reason that Manhattan and other places not in the third world are not refered to as overpopulated is due to the fact that in comparison, the vast majority of people in Manhattan eat every day, at least once. Don't get me wrong, I live in Manhattan and am completely aware of the homeless situation, but the magority of people are not starving to death. And even in the "overpopulated third world" it is not the entire county that is lacking natural resouces (most of the time) but isolated areas were people are starving.
Logan ~~Nothing Nothing, Tralala?
>> even billions if the practice really takes off
>> in the overpopulated 3rd world
>
> Why is it that the 3rd world is always thought
> of as "overpopulated"?
Overpopulated in the sense that they don't keep up with food production. That is more a government issue, though, as in too much government.
> Is the problem really too many brown people?
Absolutely not. There aren't enough people on the planet, the more the better. Just keep a strongarm government that "knows what's best" out of it.
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
At least AFAICS, the age of Genesis -- which depicts a barbaric semi-neolithic nomadic tribe roaming the deserts of the Middle East, making up stories about how their God requires them to bash in the heads of all the *other* barbaric semi-neolithic tribes, nomadic or not, that they meet (ironically, one of the earliest parallels to the Master Race teachings of the Nazis; OK, so call Godwin on me if you want) -- I'd say that age qualifies pretty damn well to be called "dark".
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here