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Transparent Aluminum a Reality
TuballoyThunder writes "Many of us remember the scene from Star Trek IV where Scotty barters the formula for transparent aluminum for a small run. It now appears that we can now add transparent aluminum to the science fact column."
Very appropriate to announce this discovery at the same time James Doohan's remains are being sent into space. One wonders if there is a closet Trekker in the military press office. :-)
Cheers,
jIyajbe
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
when you read the article, you find out that the material is not aluminum metal. It is just a transparent corund-like substance. Al203 alone is pretty hard (and easy to make - including gem colored versions) and the mixed oxide-nitride is probably harder.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
What'll be really nice is when prices get down to be viable for use in consumer-grade products. Say goodbye to broken windows from baseballs, cracked screens on dropped iPods, chipped windshields from rocks, and all sorts of other fun uses.
It should open up some cool architectural possibilities as well.
What is with that, anyway?
Aluminium is the 'correct' and internationally recommended way of writing it, with aluminum being a local variant. Personally, even as a Brit I think the second sounds more correct, but there you go.
As ever, Wikipedia reveals all.
Cheers,
Ian
Transparant aluminium bottom in an airplane (-; (Only usefull if the airplane travels without cargo)
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Is aluminium pronounced:
/. poll, but everything I submit gets rejected... I wish there were _at the very least_, proforma reasons as why things get rejected so you know where you went wrong...)
a) AL-LEW-MIN-NEE-UM
or
b) AL-LUMIN-UM
Personally, I go with 'a' coz I'm a Brit, is it just U.S. peeps who pronounce it 'b' ?
(I'd submit this as a
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The uses go way beyond windshields. How about full-length transparent SWAT shields? If it'll take a
What about airplanes? Make much of the body out of this, making maintenance that much easier.
It's not just any windsheild but a windshield that can stand up to repeated .50 caliber rounds. I think $24,000 is fine price to improve our fighting mens chances at coming home safely.
That and it will probably get cheaper when they start mass manufacturing it.
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Then there's Helum, that noble gas. And Kurchatovum, that incredibly unstable element. And Lithum, of which batteries are made. Not forgetting Valum, for people too depressed to worry about spelling.
Yes, yes, I know, a whole continent of people can't spell that metal's name. It's just like the English who wrote "cocoa" when they should have written "cacao". Amazing how an illiterate in the wrong place at the wrong time can screw up a dictionary.
K.
Google finds some pics as expected (Sorry, PDF) :
http://www.surmet.com/docs/Processing_ALON.pdf
I'm not 100% certain if they're genuine or mock ups though...
~Pev
It comes down to the fact that materials break due to initial cracks that grow bigger under stress.
Back in the late 70s early 80s I used to polish my bike components, particuarly brake calipers, for that very reason. It was in that era that there was a massive increase in technical and manufacturing sophistication from the Japanese makers, as a result of which anybody can now get well finished, non-pot-metal bike parts without having to spend a fortune for Campagnolo.
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I wonder thet the corrosion resistance is of this stuff. Most aluminum materials don't do well in the weather and I imagine even minor pitting would impact transparency.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This stuff is transparent Aluminium, in the same way that "normal" glass is
transparent Silicon. Indeed, using this criteria, we already had transparent
Aluminium in the form of Saphire. Saphire is also rather hard and makes a good
optical material. While the invention of a suitably hard and tough transparent
material is obviously news-worthy it would be wise to steer clear of the same
mistakes that sci-fi writers make when they don't understand the "sci" bit.
However, going back to the Star Trek film in question, I always liked the way
that Scotty was able to create a new material and presumably the method for making
it on a tiny Apple Mac Plus! Was he using MacDraw I wonder?
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I wonder what the refractive index of this material is? For those of us who look through tank windshield all day (figuratively speaking), if this material can be reduced in price and has a refractive index significantly greater than 1.66, then it would make our lenses much thinner, as well as being much more scratch resistant than polycarbonate.
Given that sapphire has a refractive index over 1.75, this *could* be a great breakthrough - if Big Green starts to consume large quantities of this, then the amortized NRE will be greatly reduced.
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Nope. Watch it again.
When Scotty asks how thick the wall would have to be to hold back $somenumber metric tons - he gets the reply:
"That's easy. Six inches. We carry stuff that big in stock."
To which Scotty replies something to the effect of
"What would you say if I could build you all wall to do the same thing, but be only one inch thick. Would that be worth something to ya?"
--
When they're loading the walls into the bird of prey, they're NOT 1 inch (2.54 cm), they're quite thick.
A link to a press report showing an image of ALONtm.
_ August%202003.pdf
http://www.surmet.com/docs/ALON%20Press%20Release
-Rob
The pentagon on 9/11/01 was hit by a comercial jetliner and the windows all around the impact point were still intact. The Pentagon said they were blast resistant.
Uh, those aren't garden-variety windows that just happen to be blast resistant, you know-- they are two inches thick and weigh 2500 pounds each. They're basically only blast resistant because of "brute force" design. The point of this new material is to be able to make windows that are not ridiculously thick but still provide equal or better protection than the ridiculously thick windows did.
1) http://www.xoxide.com/clearacatxca.html
2) Eyeglasses.
3) Pipes.
4) Soda cans. (Pepsi could have used this during their Crystal Pepsi phase.)
5) Windshields.
6) Engines.
7) Bicycles. (Used with carbon-fiber, Lance Armstrong would be deliriously happy.)
8) Hurricane windows.
9) Decorative and durable lawn furniture.
10) Utensils.
I have a feeling someone might find a way to swirl dyed mixtures into the clear part to make some sort of swirlie colored "glass" for vases that won't break. Eh... I'm bored...
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Expect to see this to enter the consumer market for things like - IPod nano screens, watch faces, scratch reistant coverings on eyeglasses,etc.
If I read TFA correctly, I would expect to see many more applications than this. One application I would expect to see, as soon as the price drops, is automotive glass. Traditional 'bulletproof' glass has little value in a consumer vehicle, but this material is allegedly lighter, stronger and more scratch resistant (and I would assume chip resistant) than glass. Glass makes up a significant portion of the weight in an automobile. A lighter alternative would decrease the weight and potentially increase fuel efficiency. On top of that durability and safety factors would probably also help adoption of this technology into the automotive industry. The only problem I see is that traditional glass manufacturers will cry foul.
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Hey all,
I heard a while back that a thin film of selenium, when exposed to hydrogen gas, would become transparent.
Would it be possible to make a transparent photovoltaic cell? You know, like a window that could filter out ultraviolet light and turn it into electricity, yet transmit visible light?
For that matter, would it be possible to add optical brighteners to greenhouse glass to increase the quantity of light that plants can use while reducing the risk of heat damage from noonday sun?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
This is quite true - try this with pyrex and vegetable oil. The pyrex will "disappear" when submerged into the oil.
Okay. Step back a second. At the point where you entered the thread, I wasn't denying the existence of applications. I was claiming that the article, which I "didn't read", does not provide enough information to know that the research is cost-justified. This is because there are a number of considerations in determining whether the research was a good use of scarce resources. The article did not answer any of those questions. To determine that the research was cost justified, you have to check off a number of things:
-Are users willing to pay the amortized cost of the research in its applications? Crude example: if the research has an amortized cost of $10 on each unit, but users are willing to pay only $1 for the feature, the research already didn't pay for itself. This may sound obvious, but keep in mind, inventions can do many "cool" things and still fail this test! Similar example: let's say (for simplicity) that the invention can just be used by the Air Force. Let's say that currently, the Air Force can double its combat effectiveness with $1e9. Then say the invention allows the Air Force to double its combat effectiveness for $2e9. In that case, the research was a waste. If instead, the research can double the combat effectiveness for $5e8, that is a gain of $5e8, which can then apply against the cost of the research to see if it paid for itself.
-Summing up all those cost savings must then be greater than the research costs, discounting for forgone opportunities, aka interest. If the research cost $1e9 and saves $1e9 20 years later, that's a loss, because you could have just put the $1e9 in a bank and let the interest accrue.
-That's not all. You have to then divide by the success rate of the research. The research gains must pay for all research costs; you can't just just count the winners and ignore the losers. The winners must also recoup the cost of the losers.
If it meets all those tests, then the research was justified. AGAIN, I don't deny that there are many uses of the research, but the article I "didn't read" gives no information about whether it met any part of the above. Contrary to what you claim, it would help if there were more people like me giving reality checks: "Can't we use a memory thermometer for the same purpose?" (referring to the memory metal discussed in an earlier article) Too often people count the benefits and ignore the costs. Even if the benefits do ultimately outweight the costs, you should still consider them. Getting it right through luck is a bad policy.
So, just to clarify, when you count ALL benefits, the research could be justified; the article just doesn't show that, and people rarely make this calculation.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531