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World's Lightest Solid
Erazmus writes: "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has manufactured the world's lightest solid. At only 3 milligrams per cubic centimeter, it's close to the density of air (1.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter). Spaceflight Now has the article. The article points to JPL's site, along with some amazing pictures."
The aerogel is so old (1932) that this isn't even funny ...
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Upon seaching Google for the cost of this stuff I ran across Aerogel Super-Insulation made by Aspen Aerogels. They don't have prices on their sites but it looks like somebody is trying to make an insulation product out of it. It says they are trying to break into the 20 billion dollar insulation market and that mass adoption of the product would greatly reduce fossil fuel use around the world.
Insulation characteristics of the PC case material are quite irrelevant. PCs are cooled by forced convection (air picking up heat and leaving the case with it), not heat conduction.
I wasn't able to figure out whether it would build up static electricity, and, not being an engineer or even knowing/remembering what Young's modulus, among other things in the physical specs is, I am of course only guessing, but I think it might be a better sound insulator (like a lining inside the case) than structural load-bearer (like a PC case).
If you want to waste some time on it, why don't you read through the info and brainstorm some more uses for it? I'd love to hear what you come up with. Interesting stuff.
And before you attemp making your case of aerogel, please read How Do You Work With Silica Aerogel Without Breaking It?.
Well...this is a ridiculously old story and don't know why it came up, but since we're talking about it...here is the home page for the stuff at NASA. The stuff can stand incredible amounts of pressure, but be sure not to try to tear it...it will. And to see the stuff is just cool. I mean this solid just looks like it floats on you. Oh, and it's a rather expensive manufacturing process, which is why it hasn't found use in your home yet...
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Yes, but if the total weight of you plus what your contained in is less than the weight of air, simple priciples of boyancy state that you will float up in air. If your weight is controllable (through a system of inflatable bellows for instance, like a submarine does) you can control your altitute and everything. Kinda like a blimb, only without the huge airbag.
But you forget bouyancy. Just like things that are less dense than water float at the surface, things with a lower density than air (lighter-than-air) would float a certain distance up. This is just like helium ballons. A helium ballon is lighter than air. It wouldn't float in a vacuum, but it does in our atmosphere, at least until the density of the baloon equalizes with the density of air. Now, to have an air-surfboard, the stuff would have to be either pretty darn bouyant, or pretty big.
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
Actually, it's just going to have to be pretty big. I can't find the density of the human body at the moment, but it's reasonably close to that of water, so let's use that number, 1000 kg/m^3 (this also happens to be a nice round number, easy to work with). Air at sea level has a density of roughly 1.2 kg/m^3. In order to float, you need to get the average density of person+board down to that of air (actually you need to be below it, but neutral bouyancy is interesting enough).
So, assuming a 100kg person, for ease of math, and assuming a massless board with a density of zero, the board would have to have a volume of over 83 cubic meters. (assuming I did my math correctly) For the metric-declined, this works out to a cube about 14 feet on a side.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Strong for it's weight, yes, but still very fragile and hard to work with. If you squeeze it, it shatters into lots of invisibly small dustlike particles that disappear into your carpet (remember, it *is* glass). If you try and machine it, it tends to fracture and shard.
It also attracts dirt and moisture like you wouldn't believe.
But it is neat to mess around with.
(Yes, I know what I'm talking about. I've got a bag of approximately 10 ~1 cm^3 chunks here on my desk. It's a shame I don't have a digital camera handy. From here if anyone is interested)
Here, for one place.