Nanotech Coating Prevents Fogging

MilSF1 writes "MIT scientists have applied for a patent on a coating process that reduces or eliminates fogging on glass surfaces (car windshields, eyeglasses, etc). The new coating was described today at the 230th national meeting of the American Chemical Society."

Comments

The low tech solution

[Ckwop]

Ever wanted a shave in the shower but your hand-held mirror fogs up? Rather than buying this patented glass you can resort to a low-tech solution: Rub a little shaving foam over the glass and the wash the excess off so you have a thin, clear, greasy film on the glass.You'll find that the mirror no longer steams up.

The reason this works is because the greasy film causes much larger drops to coalesce on the mirror than you would normally get. These larger drops don't refract the light nearly and as a result are essentially transparent. This simple trick allows me to insure my sideburns are the same length even when under the most horrendous time presure.

See, who says that Physics can't be useful in everyday situations?

Simon

Re:The low tech solution

[dsginter]

If you've got a hand-held mirror, then you can just heat it up under the shower water. The "fog" appears on the mirror because it is lower temperature than the water vapor. When this water vapor comes in contact with the lower temp mirror, it loses the energy that it needs to stay in the form of vapor and turns back into water. This "fogs up" the mirror.

If you just heat up the mirror, then it will no longer suck the energy out of the water vapor and cause the fog.

Fog-X

[coke_scp]

The people who make rain-x, which works rather well itself to deflect rain, also make fog-x, which I've tested on a steamy bathroom mirror, and it works perfectly.

Great news for scuba

[vstanescu]

May be this will finally replace the old method of spit and rinse, because all those special glasses on the scuba masks had no effect until now. For those who don't know, if you want your scuba mask to be perfectly clean of fog, you have to spit inside it when it is dry, then rinse very fast with sea water (just to make the glass clear enough but probably without rinsing all the substances in the saliva from the glass) then put it on the face and dive immediately. For those who forgot doing this, even the best tempered glass became foggy in a few minutes in cold water.

1947 solution

[Spy Handler]

The X-1 had a bad problem with its windshield fogging up and frosting. On the flight before it went supersonic, according to "Yeager: Autobiography":

"My crew chief applied a coating of Drene Shampoo to the windshield. For some unknown reason it worked as an effective antifrost device, and we continued using it even after the government purchased a special chemical that cost eighteen bucks a bottle."

Re:So why is this being called nanotech?

[qval]

It's being called nanotech because it uses nanoparticles, very small groupings of atoms, containing 100s or 1000s of atoms. Government money for nanotech research applies if you're working with objects smaller than 100nm in some dimension. IIRC, carbon nanotubes are sized roughly 5nm and larger in diameter.

The current state of the art of nanotech is not nanobots that can cure cancer. That's just what people speculate might come out of this technology, but how often is such exhuberance warranted? where's my flying car?

Also, by the way, something one micron across would be microtech by definition, not nanotech, but that's more me being a stickler than informative...