Slashdot Mirror
Military Develops Liquid Body Armor
kai5263499 writes "Military.com has an article about a new liquid body armor the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has developed. According to Dr. Eric Wetzel, the project coordinator: 'The key component of liquid armor is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties'."
- Man in liquid armor
walking down the lab hallway.
- Man
in liquid armor enduring heat.
- Liquid
armor on half a face
Your tax dollars at work.This is joey, the lab assistant, going on a coffee run.
This test killed a few of our volunteers, but after many tries we finally worked out all the kinks.
We do half the face in case the armor blinds the test subject, at least he'll have one good eye left. (Lessons learned from the "heat" test, we apply the same principal for the genitals as well.)
Lots of salt or huge silica gel packets.
Here is a picture of a soldier wearing some
It sounds like it works on the same principle that making a dive into your swimming pool is different from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific. Nifty stuff, although it seems that its resistance to stabbing has to be called into question when you consider that it's also sewable.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I seem to remember a gradeschool experiment where we mixed cornstarch and water in a pan and tried to slap it. Thanks to the starch, the stuff would just kinda slap you back. Is this body armor kinda doing the same thing then?
Armor that is lighter and more flexible would be more comfortable to wear. This makes it more likely to be worn. I would expect to eventually see designer suits utilizing this stuff to be bought up by politicians, rap stars, etc. Bascially anyone who would be interested in an armor plated limo.
The skate couriers in the novel wore armor based on this principle. Flexible, but with an increasing resistance curve like a catcher's mitt. It's good that it's lightweight, because if it's too bulky to do your job in, it's not really useful.
I imagine this could be combined with a chem warfare suit (maybe with build-in cooling) to make an ABC system for the footsoldier that's actually practical.
Very similar to Smart Mass Thinking Puddy. Is the military beginning to read /. and buy products from ThinkGeek for inspiration for R&D?
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
"Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a water-soluble, waxy solid that is used extensively in the cosmetic and toiletry industry."
c ol&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf- 8&oe=utf-8
http://www.google.com/search?q=Polyethylene%20Gly
That's from the first link.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
"sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books."
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Mix corn starch and water to form a paste. Stir slowly, or pour the mixture, and it acts like a liquid. Stir fast, or hit the surface, and it "breaks" like a solid, dissipating energy.
In the next james bond movie they will use this stuff in breast implants to make SUPER boobs.
Don't know about liquid armor, but I imagine if I was in an active war zone, I might fill my own armor with liquid!
Just a non-newtonian fluid. Go mix cornstarch and water, borax and something (forget what, its been a while since 6th grade science, dishsoap maybe) or get some of this. You get the same basic thing, but the point of this is that it probably doesn't shatter under the impact of a bullet... I've been kicking around the idea of something like this for a while myself actually, but more along the lines of that ferrous oil stuff they use in super high end variable shock absorbers that has a current applied to it and hardens when it senses a projectile. Not sure how to go about sensing that though, so a passive option i probably better.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Like silly-putty or cornstarch and water.
It's actually surprising no-one has figured this out sooner. (or maybe the idea has been around a long time but the perfect materials were the key).
-... ---
What's funny is that we already have a massive kill to killed ratio.
Even in iraq we have only lost 700 soldiers compared to tens of thousands of iraqis killed. One day in the not too distant future we will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people without losing a single US soldier or even having one injury.
I don't know if that's good or bad to tell you the truth. When wars become even more painless I suppose we might wage them more often. OTOH we tend to wage war every few years now as it is.
evil is as evil does
Most anti-freeze is proplyene glycol, not polyethylene glycol.
653899 - Another prime Slashdot UID
How in hell did this post get Modded "Insterestng"?
If you really want to know: look here
BTW, that was the first hit in google.
"poly" changes it completely. Binyl chloride is pretty nasty (much much worse than ethylene glycol), but polyvinyl chloride is PVC and that's all over the place. Generally when you polymerize a monomer you are using up the reactive sites that would normally cause toxicity to form bonds with other monomer molecules. The same thing goes for a whole lot of other monomers.
Polyethylene glycol is actually really bio-friendly. Proteins don't stick to it well so it can be used in the body. You can even eat the stuff. I can't think of specific products, but I know it's on the ingredient label of lots of things we eat.
What's the damage if this stuff does get penetrated? Is it worse for the wound than a bullet passing all the way through?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
As a former member of the US armed forces I had to wear a kevlar vest from time to time. The vests I wore hindered movement considerably. They were not that heavy, but the inflexibility was the worst part. As I was finishing my term new vest were just making their way into use that incorporated ballistic plates (steel I think, maybe ceramic) to actually stop bullets. The vest I wore were only said to stop fragments not a direct bullet impact. The downside to the newer vests was heavier weight. If they can make the vest more flexible, lighter weight, and have better stopping great.
Our service members need every advantage they can get. Wether or not you agree with the politics that puts our troops in harms way a person must be very anti-American to not want them all to come home again.
That is all for my rant. Time to go home for the day. :)
the_crowbarHave you read the Moderator Guidelines
Does the "poly" really change it all that much?
Sodium explosively combusts in water! Chlorine gas is highly toxic! Can the combination really change their properties all that much?
Yeah, it does quite a bit. PEG is used in shampoos and drugs all the time to make them nice and goopy.
EG is toxic because it's metabolized by alcohol dehydrogenase to form glycolic acid, causing acidosis (too much acid in the bloodstream), or various other nasty downstream products. PEG isn't metabolized, so it's safe.
Ethylene Glycol: C2H6O2
Polyethylene Glycol: C2H4O
So they are pretty different from a chemical standpoint. Good old Ethylene Glycol melts at -13C, while the "poly" melts at 60C. However, when looking up an MSDS on this stuff, I get "May act as an irritant. Toxicology not fully investigated" so I wonder about it being completely non-toxic.
See link here.
Polyethylene glycol is found in a lot of cosmetics and even some foods. It is sometimes used to treat constipation. Remember, Google is your friend.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
And is used as a major component of both cough syrup and paintballs...
Yes, it does. Or at least can, I don't know about this specific case. Ethylene Glycol has an ethylene functional group in it, which is characterised by a reactive carbon-carbon double bond. That reactive bond is almost certainly related to its toxicity. The poly in polyethylene glycol refers to polymerization. In this process, that double bond is converted into a single bond, and attaches on either end to another ethylene glycol molecule, creating a long chain of single bonds, which are far less reactive and quite possibly nontoxic. I don't know about PEG in specific, but a modest knowledge of polymer chem suggests that is what's happening. I'm sure someone can correct me if I've got it wrong, though.
chemistry is a starnge and wonderous thing. One electron on a chlorine molecule stands between it possibly giving you cancer.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
But does it protect like a stack of phonebooks? :)
Why has it taken so long for the military to start experimenting with this stuff? I must have been all of five years old when I made the connection between starch and water's impact-absorbing-fluid properties and its flexible armor potential.
Oh well, better late than never!
Absolutely.
Ethylene glycol is OH-CH2-CH2-OH and is fairly toxic. I would suspect it behaves similarly to ethanol (CH3-CH2-OH) in the bloodstream, but I don't really know. Contrast this with propylene glycol, CH2-CH2-(CHOH)-OH which is pretty much completely non-toxic.
Polyethylene glycol is (-CH2-CH2-O-)n, where n is some large number. It's a polymer. There are different kinds of PEG, but glancing at the web, there appear to be a number of different kinds available, and they appear to be reasonably non-toxic.
I think your instructor is a little bit misinformed.
Kevlar fabric isn't really a lattice. It's woven from very fine strands of a plastic which is VERY strong under tension. The material also has a tremendous coefficient of friction and even when a strand is broken, it can often be held in place by being squeezed by its neighbouring strands; even under impact. Anyone who has ever handled kevlar can attest to this as the material will give you severe friction burns easily (imagine a bad papercut and carpet burn on one spot just by casually sliding your hand down a thread -- OUCH! I cringe just remembering the stuff).
A lot of the strength of kevlar comes from its weave; bulletproof applications and such have very fine weaves to prevent particles from getting between the threads. I assure you, it is VERY difficult to damage the kevlar weave badly enough that it is rendered useless. I did a university research project that involved kevlar, and I would definitely trust a battered and beaten kevlar helmet over a steel one any day.
Been there. Done that. It's called Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Look it up.
Sadly this invention was too late to save Pat Tillman. Armor like this could save lives, and that's what it's all about. I'm all for it.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
How heavy is it? How hot does it make the wearer? Can a Private break it?
This guy is way out there
Does the "poly" really change it all that much?
In a word, yes. Here are the Material Safety Data Sheets for both chemicals:
ethylene glycol
polyethylene glycol
I like my beverages with warning labels!
Your instructor was talking about the hard Kevlar for the PAGST helmets. Kevlar vests (which ironically usually aren't Kevlar anymore, rather some kind of Aramid fiber) are still a lattice or weave of fibers. They work on two priciples 1) Extending the moment of impact by stretching out, and 2) by spreading the force of the impact across a wider area. When a bullet hits a "Kevlar" vest, the vest doesn't stop it cold instantly, rather the vest fibers stretch and entangle the round and slow it's progress. (The vest and bullet do actually move back into the body cavity slightly, but not enough to do permanent damage).
The current limiting factor with soft armor is that it won't stop a rifle round (Due to its extreme speed). So to provide protection to NIJ III+ or IV levels (i.e stopping rifle rounds) hard armor plates (usually a ceramic and titanium composite) are inserted in over vital areas.
The advantage of the liquid armor is that much less fabric will be needed to provide the same level of protection, and the hard armor plates won't be necessary.
Hit www.galls.com 's body armor section for more info on levels of protection and whatnot.
-E2
(BTW: Shadowrun had the liquid armor idea waaayyy before Snow Crash came out.)
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
For a scientific paper on the subject, see Advanced Body Armor Utilizing Shear Thickening Fluids, by Y. S. Lee, R. G. Egres Jr. and N. J. Wagner, all of the Center for Composite Materials and Dept. of Chemical Engineering, U. of Delaware, and E. D. Wetzel of the Army Research Laboratory, Weapons and Materials Research Directorate Aberdeen Proving Ground.
For a University of Delaware Press Release (with photos), see here.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Water-soluble, eh?
So...is this armor pretty much out of the question for amphibious units, or soldiers in the rain?
Does it freeze and shatter in cold weather, or bake out in hot weather? Does it absorb sweat during a march and then your armor runs down your leg?
...
Also, perhaps this stuff could give stuntmen a whole new level of safety while still giving them a lot of mobility.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I think I can speak for nearly all of us when I say the last thing we want is to see American soldiers die. That's kind of the whole point.
Oh, you mean a real country like, hmmm, France? We could defeat the French using nothing but a bunch of irate Cub Scouts.
Go ahead, coward, name the country that could even stand up to us for more than a few days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid
Don't tell the military! They'll really be annoyed they wasted all that money when they could have just used cornstarch.
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the books by Larry Niven. I forget which one, exactly, but somewhere he describes armor almost exactly like this. It's soft and flexible, until you hit it, and it becomes very hard.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
"Sarge! I gotta crap bad, but I can't!"
:)
"dont panic son, we're into combat soon, oh, and you're on point"
"phhhrrrrrrrrp"
Nukes are not always desirable.
For example you may want something the country has *cough* oil *cough*. In that case you don't want to make the country uninhabitable. Not only do you want to make sure the occupying army is unharmed but you will need the labor of the civillians to make the gears of industry turn.
If we dropped nukes on iraq who would pump the oil and transport it to our ships? How could our soldiers stay in the country for a decade to make sure people do what we say?
Polyethylene glycol's pretty good on one hand: it's dirt cheap, comes in a variety of weights (we have on the shelf in lab average molecular weight PEGs from 200 to 20,000 daltons) and as has been mentioned above is nontoxic. What's bad about PEG is that it degrades fairly easily--it should be stored in the dark and kept cold, at least if you're going to use it as a reagent. This makes me wonder about the shelf life of the armor, although PEG degredation might not be the limiting factor; physical wear and tear might be.
Does this non-toxie liquid stuff mean that if I were to drink it, I would be bulletproof? Wicked!
Not only is it "non-toxic", but it's an ingredient of one of my favorite carbonated beverages, Dr Pepper.
So they're thinking of putting it in jump boots - once it stiffens up, does it then just become liquid again immediately afterward? Even when hit with a bullet?
Any chemist worth his salt would be able to answer that.
Actually the article says that stab resistance is better than standard armor.
That means it's better than standard Kevlar armour, which has very poor stab resistance. Body armour meant to protect against both bullets and blades is reinforced with hard plates over the "problem" areas.
Pierre
For example, in urban combat, you are constantly looking up, and pointing your weapon up. As you crane your neck backward and move your non-firing hand above your head, with a traditional kevlar vest you reach a flexibility limitation. If you then have to contort your body laterally for some reason (and they always arise) your trunk is limited in flexiblity as well.
A vest that could incorporate greater flexiblity and some sort of heat-dissipation mechanism would be a real boon to soldiers who need body armor protection.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...Silly Putty , but presumably it's hard to impregnate Kevlar with it.
I really don't want to know how this works.
All but one of the guys who dropped the nukes committed suicide. 3:250000. Respectable I suppose.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Read this, it could be useful for you: Data about vest classes
All the Snowcrash quotes left out the best part about the armor: "A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door." Probably not applicable, but damn I love that line... I'm still laughing about it years later.
... but excess perspiration will waft through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest."
But wait -- there's more! -- the really best part of the Snow Crash quote is:
"
Stephenson may have his faults, but he's got the gift for cool similes.
-kgj
-kgj
The main reason that Ethylene Glycol is toxic is that a metabolic byproduct is glycoaldehyde, a close relative of Formaldehyde, the acidosis is bad but would rarely be fatal on its own. The treatment for Ethylene Glycol poisoning is Ethanol ingestion because "Ethanol will competitively inhibit alcohol dehydrogenase", so if someone ingests EG give them a glass of Vodka and take em to the ER for observation.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Another scientific paper on the subject: "The ballistic impact characteristics of Kevlar (R)
woven fabrics impregnated with a colloidal
shear thickening fluid," JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE 38 (2003) 2825 - 2833.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
This is straight off of Army News Service.
And they even have a picture!
As a motorcyclist, the kit I wear has a shit load of armour in it, shoulders, hips, elbows, back, shins, ankles but even with that the inevitable is broken bones when you slam into some street furniture.
If this stuff goes rigid when there's an impact it might just distribute the impulse over a large enough area to reduce the internal injuries.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
All body armour is resistant against what is intended to prevent, not invincible. Bullet proof vests are actually nothing of the sort, they are bullet resistant. Shoot a Type II vest with a 9mm pistol round, it won't penetrate, shoot it with a 5.56mm rifle round, it'll go right through.
So just because something resists stabbing doesn't mean it can't be done. Needles more so. The way a knife or needle works is based of of high pressure on a small amount of surface. Well a needle has a much smaller area to penetrate than a knife thus can achieve more PSI with less input force.
It may not be sewable by hand, it may need a machine with an extra hard needle but so what? BP vests are expensive items as is, it is ok if there are some extra manufacturing costs with this new kind.
A lot of the strength of kevlar comes from its weave; bulletproof applications and such have very fine weaves to prevent particles from getting between the threads. I assure you, it is VERY difficult to damage the kevlar weave badly enough that it is rendered useless. I did a university research project that involved kevlar, and I would definitely trust a battered and beaten kevlar helmet over a steel one any day.
I think you're forgetting a KEY factor here. A kevlar helmet would be useless. The bullet would just push the kevlar into your skull.
Kevlar is mixed with epoxy when put into actualy use, resulting in a composite material like fiberglass. Like fiberglass, it doesn't not hold up well if you put a dent in it. The dent causes the material to flex and concetrates stresses at particular points.
You can beat a dent out of steel, but you can't do the same with kevlar. It's structure's been comprimised.
If I got a choice of new helmets, I'd take the kevlar, but if I had to pick between a damaged steel helmet and a damaged kevlar helmet, I'd take the steel in a heartbeat.
Life is too short to proofread.
Couple of issues here (avoiding the whole flame aspect):
1) While logistics would be a pain, if the US camped a couple of carrier battle groups off the coast of a given country, they would own the sky and sea in short order. It becomes much easier to keep supplied when you can do that.
2) Iraq had something like the 3rd largest army in the world back in 1991, which the US effectively neutralized in a month or so. Again, airpower is king. The country isn't large or exceptionally modern, but it was quite a military foe.
3) If Iraq is small, then there aren't many countries that are a big military threat. Germany, the UK, israel... the list is small and we're on good terms of most of the strongest countries (coincidence? I think not)
4) The fact that the US hasn't fought a "big" country in years doesn't mean jack with regards to the ability to. I've never mugged someone, that doesn't mean I'm too weak to.
Sure, there's some arrogance from the US on the military front, it makes sense. Like it or not, the US posesses the strongest military force in the world.
Hate us for our culture, politics, whatever, that's an subjective opinion and you are welcome to them. But military strength is an objective thing, and hatred of the States doesn't diminish that.
And yeah, if we fought a united (!) Europe, we could probably be beaten. There are a zillion better reasons not to attack, least of all being that France is a strong ally...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
No wonder why both of them taste like absolute shit.
Rembember that rubbery black bodyglove under the white armor... ;-)
``L'imagination au povoir.''
We Aready have those... they're called m-16's.
Contrary to popular belief, Kevlar vests do not completly negate the effects of a 5.56 round hitting the soldier.
They're designed to prevent injury from fragmentation, (explosions, etc) which accounts for most battlefield injures.
Although in some cases vests have saved soldiers from the effects of bullet wounds, that's not the intent.
I wonder... sewing it at a high speed would probably break the machine, but as long as you keep everything slow, you're fine.
So technically, if you manage to hold that prison guard still while you slowly push the shiv through his armor, it'll work just fine (for you, not the guard). Interesting -- so throwing yourself on the knife might actually be a useful defense!
It reminds me of a fight scene in Dune (was that the movie? -- does anyone remember this?); they had force fields that detected and warded off quick attacks, but allowed a slow entry into the field would be allowed... so the trick to knifing someone was to do it slowly.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
But how does a footbal player turn soldier qualify as a hero, exacty?
I was a soldier, am I a hero? Are football players heroes?
What about Iraqi soldiers, are they heroes?
at certain stages of metabolism, both of the products you and the parent poster mentioned are formed.
In years past, the only treatment was competitive enzyme inhibition via an alcohol drip (that's still the treatment in some places)... though fomepizole (Trade name is Antizol, I believe) is the safest treatment now, and a hell of a lot easier to get than persuading the pharmacy to mix up an ethanol drip.
Ethylene Glycol is a nasty poisoning... and thankfully not that common. I'm pretty thankful that I haven't taken care of a case of that in a few years.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
You may take the steel helmet, but i'll go for the Mithril every time.
Stylish, light and very, very expensive(Have you priced it lately? it's out of this world).
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
of PEG... it's called Golytely... here's a bit of info.
It's commonly used by gastroenterologists to clean out the colon prior to endoscopy. You have to drink an entire gallon...it's usually referred to as a "bowel prep."
To those of us familiar with it, it's also affectionately known as "GoHeavily," "GoFrequently," or "GoEndlessly." I've also seen it used to treat bad constipation... ingestion of the required amount virtually guarantees an impressive "code brown."
Yes, I realize that's waaaaay more than you wanted to know. Sorry.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
After all, liquid courage has been a part of the military since the beginning of time.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Whose vest are you talking about? My vest (Safariland Zero-G level III-A) should actually stop bullets. It's rated for that, anyway.
I'm not sure if they're effective against the .223 rounds in question, but I can test this easily enough. I replace the vest anyway around Halloween, and shooting the old vests is a time-honored cop tradition. :)
So, anybody want to pony up for a few boxes of SS109?
And reading about how military ballistic vests don't actually stop bullets, has anybody ever wondered why an EMT-Basic working for AMR has a better (lighter AND more effective) vest than most soldiers? Someone should pass on to the Army that it's really not that hard to get decent body armor. Even a dumb-assed ticket-writing nazi pig like me can manage it.
You're confusing Polyethylene Glycol with just Ethylene Glycol, which does taste sweet and dogs often lick up puddles of it as it is in antifreeze and ends up on driveways. Not good for fido.
-- What I don't have in intelligence, I make up for in a lack thereof.
Erm, wrong. Most antifreeze is Ethylene Glycol, not Propylene Glycol nor Polyethylene Glycol. Propylene Glycol is often found is candy and is the liquid used to make fog in fog machines.
-- What I don't have in intelligence, I make up for in a lack thereof.
This could also have some very valuable applications where protective garmentation for sports are required... If bullets can't penetrate the armor, it would easily protect against hockey sticks and pucks, collisions with trees, and, of course, smacking pavement at a high velocity.
;)
Never mind how a jacket of the stuff would affect the school bully...
The Penguin Producer
Uhhh, the fluid is inside of little packets. The packets are fairly flexable, since they contain liquid, but they solidify when sudden force is applied, such as a bullet/shrapnel impact, or a concussive blast. They are inset into combat gear, instead of rigid plates.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
My experience with MSDS sheets is that if it doesn't say it will rot your arm off, it's probably pretty damn safe. They try to cover all the bases, and relatively everyday materials wind up sounding alarmingly dangerous... Of course, you ought to check a MSDS before handling any material you're unfamiliar with -- but with a large enough grain of salt that you don't wind up paranoid of toching sand, or something. Seriously, look sand up -- dangerous stuff. :)
"We would first like to put this material in a soldier's sleeves and pants..."
So the hookers of the future will ask soldiers, "Is that shear-thickening liquid armor in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?"
HO-CH2-CH2-OH
The repeat unit of polyethylene glycol looks like this:
-CH2-CH2-O-
So with polyethylene glycol, just attach that unit end-to-end over and over again. How many repeat units you have in the polymer will determine the melting point and many other properties. The MSDS you link to is for PEG-8000, which probably means it has a molecular weight of 8000.
Incidentally, you'll notice that the ethylene glycol unit (the monomer) is different from the PEG repeat unit by an H2O -- water is a byproduct of the polymerization.
Polymerization does make a huge difference in properties. Polyethylene is basically ethane (or, if you look at it another way, methane) attached end-to-end, but polyethylene, of course, is very different chemically from methane.
Finally, I get to post to Slashdot about a technical subject I know something about. Quick, someone, mod me up! It may never happen again! :)
The modern challenge for our military is not war mongering - we rule at making war - but peace keeping - that is respecting people and serving a population while being vulnerable to rogue dissendents.
This raises the need to identify the location of a stray bullet in real time.
Imagine a self organized network of wearable computers with pretty basic microwave doppler shift detectors.
Even a single bullet fired would create a doppler shifted frequency in a reflected microwave signal, and the network could compare notes and triangulate the trajectory - even calculating a return fire path and indicate if not photograph or return at least rubber bullets on the perpetrator.
That would be awesome defensive gear.
AIK
Going above and beyond the call of duty is what spereates the heroes from the soldiers.
Absolutely. I respect the hell out of anyone who fights for another person's freedom, but that should not be considered a heroic act, it should be considered a solemn act of every free person. Every time people point to the $3 million as important, they disrespect not only Pat but every other soldier out there who is leaving things at home they value far more than money.
Bullets.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There is a wonderful demonstration of how this works. Make a wet paste of cornstarch. You'll notice if you take a stick or even your finger and stir it around very slowly... it will act like a viscous liquid. It flows around your stick and the path left in the paste slowly fills back in. Now try moving the stick quickly through the paste and it suddenly becomes solid, the wet gloss of it's surface disappears, and the paste cracks and breaks like a hard material. Literally the force applied to the paste shifts it from liquid to solid state and upon release of stress it becomes liquid again.
This makes for a variety of interesting properties. A protective shield of this material was used as part of an engineering experiment at UCI in 1978, when a box of specific size was thrown off the engineering building and an egg in the box survived.
Genda
you don't want to make the country uninhabitable
Yes, this is why neutron devices are preferable to nukes. Eliminate the people but leave the infrastructure intact. Or so I recall from whatever sci-fi....
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
If you'd like to replicate the characteristics of this product for yourself, go to your kitchen and grab the corn starch.
Take corn starch and pour about 1 tablespoon into a small bowl, then add a small amount of cold water, about a teaspoon or so. These amounts are estimates, use more or less of each to reach a desired consistancy.
Mix it up, and you'll start to see the similarities.
If you let the 'mixture' sit, it will remain liquid, but the moment you stir it, it'll harden. Pour it into your hand and play with it, as you play with it you'll notice its a solid substance, the instant you stop playing with it, it'll turn back into a liquid and run through your fingers.
Pretty cool stuff, pretty fun, and cheap to do!
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
"You know what pisses me off most? Not naive idiots like you, but that George Bush was a pussy. If we had treated Iraq like we did Germany or France at the end of WWII there would be *no* uprisings, car bombs, or anyother getting out of line. But no. Jr. had to go and do a 'humane' war. Dont bomb infrastructure.. dont bomb civies. Uncle."
That's right. Because, as we know, the repressive tactics the Soviets used in Eastern Europe translated into "no uprisings, car bombs, or anyother getting out of line".
All but one of the guys who dropped the nukes committed suicide.
And so did many victims of the Holocaust.
And yet, many of the Nazis who committed what were -- unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- unarguably war crimes, did not commit suicide, and some continue to collect pensions from the German government to this day.
I'm not trying to say that no American ever committed war crimes; My Lai was also unarguably a war crime (and may Calley burn in Hell!), and some of the U.S. military's actions in Iraq -- as in throwing prisoners in a river to drown -- surely are atrocities.
I'm just pointing out that suicide isn't necessarily what the guilty do. Indeed, I'd be inclined to suggest that the really guilty, people like Josef Mengele ("Angel of Death" responsible for human experimentation at Auschwitz, died vacationing at a Brazilian beach), Rudolf Höß (first commandant of Auschwitz, executed), and Erich_Priebke (perpetrator of the Ardeatine caves massacre, still alive), tend to be so -- for lack of a better word -- evil that they feel they're not guilty and therefore feel no need for suicide or other punishment. (Indeed, Priebke so strongly felt that the killing 350 Italian civilians was not his responsibility but the responsibility of those who ordered him to do it, that he openly admitted his actions from fifty years later to a television news crew's cameras -- and it was only this admission that led to his trial).
For the record, I believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no more illegal than any bombing of cities in the war -- and all major combatants bombed cities in World War II. Dead by conventional bomb, dead by V1 rocket, dead by fire-bombing, dead by atomic bomb -- they're all dead. I'm unaware of any difference in ways of being dead, with the possible exception that atomic bombs mean a quicker death.
Also, for the record, I believe any crime involved in dropping the atomic bombs pales beside the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Korea, China (in "the Rape of Nanking" (warning: link includes a disturbing picture of mass decapitation) the word "rape" is used pretty literally -- but includes ripping babies from their mothers' arms and bashing the babies' heads against walls, prior to raping the mother), the Philippines, and the Bataan Death March, not to mention the Japanese forced labor camps in which tens of thousands died.
To those who contend that we "could have" beaten Japan without recourse to atomic bombs, I ask them how many more America boys would have had to have died to achieve an unconditional Japanese surrender using only conventional weapons -- and if those arguing against using atomic bombs had any of their family members on the line.
I wasn't in the Pacific fighting Japan, but Paul Fussell (later professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania) was -- after fighting Hitler's legions in Europe -- and I'll defer to his opinion and that of the other boots on the ground: "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb"
But let me ask you: how many American boys would you have sacrificed in further conventional war against Japan, so that you, safe at home, could claim the moral high ground of an atomic-bomb-free but protracted conventional war ?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
By far most of the people who oppose the war are not American, and their primary reason to oppose it is the tens of thousands of Iraqis that were and are killed. Not that most people want the American soldiers dead, but those 700 are a much lesser concern, especially since they did do most of all that killing.
The tendency of Americans to completely forget/not care that there even were any Iraqis hurt is maybe the most disturbing thing about this country to me.
Excuse me? A quicker death my ass! If you were dying of radiation sickness right now, or were a child with one and a half arms, soon to die from cancer I don't think you'd be so keen to drop nuclear bombs.
I do not know whether it was "economical" (although using that word in references to human lives disgusts me) to drop the bombs, but doing something such as that was definitely an atrocity. Perhaps it was the lesser of two evils, but it was still damn evil - and everyone should recognise that.
When it comes to a falloutesque situation, I hope it was, at least, "economical."
im in ur
Israel is more likely to explode bombs in the US by smuggling them in then to try and launch them from missiles. They have a very large spy network in the US and it would be very easy to smuggle in nuclear bombs and plant them at the hundred largest cities in the US. Let them all go at once and we are pretty much sunk.
The worry about israel is not so much that they see us a threat (after all they suckle on our teats) it's that they are a rougue nation which believes that international law does not apply to them.
evil is as evil does
Exposing a metal structure (Let say, a tank) to a large dose of neutron radiation, makes it radioactive. FAFAIK A neutron bomb is a standard nuke without the depleted uranium shield to keep the neutrons inside the bomb until the bomb blasts apart.
It was designed as a countermeasure against the vast numbers of Soviet tanks. There were some places in Europe where those tanks would need to drive close together to pass and if a neutron bomb would be detonated above those tanks, it would turn the invading armor devisions into radioactive metal and death bodies.
in 1967 and 1968 at Ohio State University, I researched and used this property of thixotropes as both an acoustic coupler and as a high-pass filter. My department (Welding Engineering) was doing research on non-destructive testing of concrete highways -- contractors got paid for the average depth of the concrete emplaced, (nominally nine inches) and that had always been tested and documented with core samples.
.5 microsecond pulse gives a long train of harmonics athat were not only not useful to my purpose, but were, in fact a distraction.) It also filtered out the low frequency multi-path reflections within the concrete.
We attempted to do it with a sonar method. Basiclly, we whacked the concrete with a half microsecond, 2Mhz pulse from barium ferrite crystals mounted rigidly in a big aluminum ring, and measured the time in and out.
Problems were the aggregate nature of concrete, impedance of the interface, and both physical and acoustic coupling in and out.
I discovered that a tube of a hair grooming product called "Groom and Clean" rang when tapped. Curious as to why, and having all these neat acoustic toys to play with in our lab, I discovered several things.
First, what thixotropes are, (Groom and Clean was primarily methyl cellulose suspended in water) second, what other similar materials existed, third, what cheaper materials were available (bentonite) and what the stuff was good for.
All thixotropes have the property of flowing like liquids when moved gently., and acting like glass when shocked. IOW, you can stir it, but if you fire a projectile at it, or simply whack it with a hammer, it will shatter like flint or a big chunk of glass in a characteristic 'conchoidal' fracture. the key feature is though, that it *immediately* slumps into a liquid again!
OK, why is this? The composite material is small flakes of a wettable, but insoluble crystalline material. In bentonite it's plain old ordinary kaolin type clay, with a particular sheetlike structure. When this is wetted, and suspended in water, (I found early on, that plain old antifreese worked better, but I had trouble enough squeezing any cash out of the administrator, without having to beg for a 55 gal drum of propylene glycol), the result is just a big tub of gray glop (bear in mind these are all scientific terms of art.)
A projectile, or more to the point, in my research, any fast-onset shock, turned the plates up on edge, more quickly than they could flow out of the way of each other. The flakes, in touching each other, produced a temporary rigid matrix that acted like glass, or flint (both super-viscous liquids)
In retrospect, the intuitive leap required to soak a fabric in this stuff, and use it as armor should have been obvious, but it was not the focus of my interest, or needs. Oh well, the University would have had patent anyway, since I was just a lowly bench researcher
At any rate, the end result was that I could use it as a pysical acoustic coupler (the gooey characteristic) under my big aluminum ring, and and the glop also acted as an impedance transformer for the 2Mhz 'bong' from the piezo-electric crystals, because very high frequency pulses would pass through, selectively, more easily than the low frequency rumbles and internal reflections from inside the aluminum block. (a Fourier analysis for a single
The receiver, in a close fitting hole in the ring, got slathered on the sides and end with the bentonite as well. Before the drillers mud improvements, our oscilloscope had a lot of 'grass' that made spotting the echo difficult, and often times impossible. Knowing the mean trasnmission times thruogh various types of concrete was helpful, but not definitive. Our new ability to clean up both the input signal (the bong!) and the received echo made the return signal much more obvious in the now much reduced 'grass' on the oscilloscope.
I had previously worked with concrete (as the scion of a big readi-mix c
I'm armed and I haven't changed my patch, so don't start with me -- you *know* how I get!
From what my grandfather, a retired US Army E-9 told me, the major benefits of the Neutron bomb were that the radioactive materials created from the detonation of a Neutron Bomb had extremely short (In Terms of Radioactives) half-lives. So you can drop one on a country, then move in when it cools down. Also, the Neutron Radiation caused water to boil, which will destroy wood, concrete, paper, et cetera, et cetera. I'm guessing, though I'm no Physics Major, that it would also probably destroy the oil.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"