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The Best Frying Pan Ever
caulfield writes "Nano-tech saves the day again! Czech out the newest non-stick surface. Applications include: faster submarines, effecient raincoats, and coffee-proof keyboards."
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That has to be one of the strangest misspellings ever in a /. article. A salute to you, sir!
Is there any particular reason that the original poster mentioned the name of the Czech Republic, rather than the English word "check"? At first I thought it may have been some kind of pun on research done in Prague or something, but no -- a quick scan over the BBC article and I see no mention of any places other than the UK and USA.
Simple, typical Slashdot spelling, or some kind of dangling reference?
THE WORLD MUST KNOW.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Sheesh. uncoated iron, steel, tinned copper.
must... stay... awake...
but any watercraft. And not just watercraft, but anything that would be more efficient with less friction. If they can get the cost down to that of, say, automotive paint, then they'll really have something with huge market impact in an incredible number of industries.
Okay, the bottom of your fry pan is covered with jillions of those teflon microspikes, so your eggs can't possibly stick. But will all those microspikes (and the air trapped between 'em) conduct heat well enough for your eggs to cook decently?
Now comes time to take up your eggs, and you slip your trusty pancake flippy in to move 'em to your plate. Did you just damage a bunch of those skinny, fragile-looking microspikes?
Next, you put the microspike coating on your boat's hull. How long does it take to degrade it to uselessness? Lots of microorganisms might find the little spaces between those spikes to be a cozy home...you've got a not-so-special familiar kind of slimy slipperyness once they displace the air in there.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Actually, what the nanocoating does is prevent the water from flowing down into the spaces between the spikes, but (if I'm reading this correctly) the flow friction is a combination of the teflon surface and the air flowing between the nanospikes. Hence, if you grew microcrystals on your car, it air would flow around and through the spikes, and you would slow your car down significantly. In addition, the most significant negative forces on your car (and in many flow situations) are drag from turbulence and air pressure. If the military wants a racing submarine capable of beating a traditional water-born craft, it will have to find a way to create perfectly smooth flow over a non-smooth surface.
Not to say that either of those are what the poster implied. But the technology does not solve the only problems with liquid movement. And it certainly won't find its way onto the family station wagon.
The ______ Agenda
The raincoat idea ... we already have completely waterproof raincoats. What people really want is a surface that is more breathable, too. Does this have the potential to be better than Goretex?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
three-words: high speed condoms.
I'm looking forward to condoms made from this because There's two things I've never gotten used to and that's the smell of burning rubber and screaming women.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I dont know. I'm just asking.
Obviously if they were bigger objects then their bulk points of failure and ability to dissipate heat would not be adequate (for teflon) but perhaps on the molecular scale these things have non-bulk shear strengths and can rapidly shed heat given a huge surface to volume ratio??
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Note that the substance being used is Teflon, so as to start with a good non-stick surface and make it even less sticky by crafting its surface into "nano-spikes"
Now Teflon is poisonous to birds in quantities small enough that pet birdscan be killed just by fumes given off by Teflon cookware in normal use.
It can also cause flu-like symptoms in humans (see above link).
I would imagine (but don't know) that if you form the Teflon into "nano-spikes", you increase the service area and thus can expect more fumes to be produced.
So how important is non-stick to you?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Sharks have been taking advantage of this for ages. :)
I work for UCLA's MAE (Mech & Aerospace Eng) Dept. Prof. Kim's a pretty cool guy and it's great to see his work featured on Slashdot! w00t!11!!
A surface treatment was discovered in Isreal last year that uses an arrangement of spheres. The REALLY cool thing about it is that by spacing the spheres the right way to tune the wavelength, you can change the color. V-cute
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
have they solved the problem of you to get the non-stick surface to stick to the frying pan?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If they can get all those tiny needles.... wouldn't the surface be smoother WITHOUT the needles, and therfore have less friction?
Anyone disagree?
Nano-tech saves the day again!
This isn't nanotech. While it may be a nifty advance in materials technology, it's still produced "in the large" by relatively conventional methods. Calling this sort of thing nanotechnology is like calling someone a computer scientist because they know how to send e-mail, or perhaps calling an abacus a "high speed digital computer".
Yes, it is technology, and yes, it involves very small things, but the technology isn't at the nanoscale, even if in some sense the product is.
-- MarkusQ
Imagine that!
... ;)
Of course, you'd have to make the instructions for use idiot-proof, which is where the *really* amazing science happens
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If you think about submarines in a marine environment, the defence department will be very excited to hear about this," CJ Kim, an engineer at the University of California at Los Angeles, told BBC World Service's Discovery programme
On the other hand...
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It seems that for the nanoturf to work, there needs to be air surrounding the spikes so that a minimum solid-liquid interface occurs. If you attempt to use this principle with a submarine, the air pockets are going to shrink significantly as depth increases. Also, corrosion loves pointy things.
http://www.dhmo.org
wouldn't it be a pain trying to type on them? I imagine it would be like handling wet soap, your fingers would slip everytime they try to push down the keys.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Most of the modern world would buy one.
I for one would pay much more to have a
toilet that would not need to be cleaned.
I think this would make an excellent
demonstration. (Kidding aside, perhaps
a frictionless toilet would require less
water to work - now thats a idea!)
There's two things I've never gotten used to and that's the smell of burning rubber and screaming women.
Somehow I doubt that ANY slashdotter has had the opportunity to get used to a woman screaming in ecstacy.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Get a really nice cast iron frying pan (or for eggs and pancakes, a flat griddle.
Pour a handful of table salt and a tablespoon of olive oil into it. Heat it up until it's hot but not quite frying. Take it off the heat.
Grab a few pieces of paper towel, and fold over a few times until you have a nice thick paper towel pad.
Sand the heck out of the frying pan's surface with the hot oil/salt mixture.
Rinse well, and immediately put back on the heat to evaporate the remaining water (to prevent the pan rusting). By the way, *never* wash an iron pan unless you do it this way. You'll rust it out.
Voila. You've got a *much* healthier, and *much* smoother surface than a teflon pan, and it can take all the abuse you can hurl at it.
mindslip
Wow, what a world-changing revolution!
"with [regard to] "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
--Thoreau, "Walden"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Ask any cook worth his/her pinch of salt and they'll tell you that non-stick pans are not good for a lot of things. Specifically, any time you want to cook a meat to a nice brown color and then make a sauce, you specifically don't want a non-stick pan. You actually want little bits of the meat to stick to your pan as you cook.
Why, you ask? Because, those little bits that stick to the pan undergo something called the Maillard reaction (similar to sugars caramelizing) which results in deliciously complex flavors you can't get otherwise. Plus, when you're done cooking the meat, you can deglaze those little stuck bits with some water, alcohol, vegetable or fruit juice and the deglazed bits will form the basis of your sauce.
That's one of the reasons why chefs will pay $200 and up for a clad saute pan that appears to be stainless steel (definitely not non-stick).
My bad... try mazola. Methyl Silicone