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Hydrophilic Powder Used To Save Library Books
VersatilePrimate writes "Wired News has a story about a polymer that can instantaniously suck 2000 times in its body weight of water. Super Slurper, a starch-based polymer with a powerful thirst, has been employed in diapers and filters, but researchers want to turn the page and develop a different application: drying waterlogged books."
This stuff vs. the Super Big Gulp...
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Do people still read printed books?
"... a mere teaspoon of the stuff can absorb a gallon of water"
Somebody has been pulling a reporter's leg.
In a related story, the number of borrowable copies of Short Stories to Read While You Kayak jumped up 7,000%...
YES!! Super Slurp versus Super Slurpee!!!
I can hear the ice click against the plastic sides, and he fizz in my drink. 66 sloshing ounces of Diet Coke!
Eat at Joe's.
From what I understand, one of the big problems for libraries is that mass produced paper in the last 150 years or so is acidic and degrades the paper. I've looked at 100 year old newspapers in local libraries that were practically crumbling.
Leave a newspaper out in the sun a couple of weeks and you'll get the idea of what happens in a shorter time frame.
I've heard of efforts to treat books with a base to help balance the pH and halt degradation, but I think it's somewhat expensive.
Sometimes I've thought that some of my old comic books might better be treated with a base or else stored in a freezer. Meanwhile, they're yellowing with age.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Super Slurper ... has been employed in diapers ...
I don't know whether to be horrified or aroused at the prospect of Super Slurper in my underpants.
Something about this sets off my bogometer. Perhaps it's the assertion that a teaspoon of the material can absorb a full gallon of water. Even if it could expand enough such that its volume approximated a gallon, the resulting substance would be only slightly less viscous than the water itself ... it just isn't possible to get enough structure from so little mass.
In other words, if a teaspoon of the stuff absorbed a gallon of water, it would damage books just like a gallon of water would.
We don't generally call that ABSORBING water. We generally call it DISSOLVING IN WATER. :)
Would it be more cost effective to disperse this into the atmosphere and retrieve the jelly-like by-product than it would be to cover the damages of a hurricane?
Why don't we just infect the books with rabies-induced hydrophobia in the first place?
Reminds me of the stuff called Dynagel used for that same purpose. However, preventing hurricanes from forming is a dangerious idea. After all, that's alot of energy that must be released. If you don't let the weather do it's job, it might just make for some nasty side effects later on that would put global warming to shame. It's basic thermodynamics really, you can't destroy energy. So your better off just getting rid of it naturally. And hurricanes seem to do the job just fine.
Life is not for the lazy.
Yes, but the result is still very wet.
This stuff is often used to initiate new oil rig workers.
1)You get them to hold a bag of it over their heads (e.g. ask them to hand it up to you)
2)Take a knife and slice the bag open, covering them with the powder
3)Dowse them with water, turning them into a gelly, goopy mess.
4)Laugh your head off.
What about the pages in national geographic that are warped and stick together? Wil it be able to save those as well?
WURD!!
It's not like it's not possible - there's a book of water-related erotica (called Aqua erotica, I think) that's completely waterproof and not in a kid's floating bath-book sense. It's printed completely on plastic and it's not all that much more expensive than a normal trade paper novel. The pages almost feel like paper, too.
Just something to thing about.
Triv
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
A handful of the stuff will turn a gallon of water into gel almost instantly, and it has a shimmering, translucent appearance.
Good for cleaning up toilet overflows, too.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I read that as hydrophallic. And my WTF and subsequent peals of laughter must've been heard for blocks. Then I read the rest and realised that it didn't work, so I re-read it.
To the researcher(s) who discovered we don't read letter by letter but rather by whole words, sometimes that is obviously not a good thing.So, I own that water proof book that you skeak of. Also another, "Cradle to Cradle," which describes an attempt to develop a better reycling ... well, cycle.
Bill McDonough (architect) and Michael Braungart (chemist) have some really sound ideas about saving the planet while still producing stuff.
The paper replacement is a plasic and natural resin combo - prototyped in the Melcher Media "Durabook"s. The need next is for an ink that can be boiled off, and reclaimed leaving a blank page and a batch of ink. (The "paper" might be re-used as is, or re-processed both without bleach or loss of structure.)
But, as said, I'm not throwing this book away. Get your own, please! and Read it!
...is with a computer. duh.
Why aren't all books digitized, yet?
It must be done.
NOW!
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
like when you have a wet book, add a dry powder and then you have a drying book with a wet powder. Is the wet powder removed? and if so removed from each page seperatly? There would still need to be heat to dry the book and the powder to have it fall away from the pages. Sounds like a good way to save a book but saving alot of time could be a goal not achieved.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth