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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."
The ability to wrap your mother's sandwiches in transparent aluminum and loose your apetite before you even unwrap it!
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
Now if we could only arm our military vehicles with convential armor let alone the nifty new stuff..
- Gronk!
How quaint.
No pics :(
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
Perhaps with this technology we can have see-through cans and this will no longer be a problem :)
Sound just what Apple need to make some scratch resistant screens for the iPod Nano :)
seriously. give the nano a nice coat of this and i think apple's little scratching post will turn into something nice and...well...scratchless
I don't think that'll catch on.
Grr...
I can now order my Wonder Woman jet! Now's where's my Golden Lasso and Amazon Bangles? Soon I hope. Now, if only surgery took well, I'd be all set...
IIRC the windshield of a Humveee is about 72" x 23"... thats 1656 square inches. The article quotes $10 - $15 a sq. inch, so the windshield would be worth $16,560 to $24,840.... I guess they wont be protecting fleets of vehicles with them?
The Air Force Research Laboratory's materials and manufacturing directorate is testing aluminum oxynitride -- ALONtm
And look.. the trademark is built right in as well!
The military is planning to test this new material on its nuclear wessels.
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.
Polishing (like case hardening) belongs to a normal metallic property called work hardening. You work a metal it will become harder (but normally also more brittle). In fact it is rarer to have a metal that won't work harden than not. Time to go back to metal shop!!
See also here for earlier developments in this area.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
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
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sapphire which is basically a crystal of aluminium oxide has been synthetised almost 100 years ago and is commonly used nowadays. Some non-scratch watches use that instead of glass.
A transparent case made of aluminium...Mmmmm, aluminium..
47 Meelion Dollars!?! I'm the cat!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I'm 40% aluminium! Bender
... and then they built the supercollider.
It means it'll resists anything except a bunch of bored teenage
scratch-taggers armed with screwdrivers at 3am on a sunday morning.
This isn't that strange, and certainly here on SlashDot I'd expect the readership to be well aware how things can get harder if they are rubbed the right way.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Here's the history behind the difference (from the Wikipedia article):
Scotty doesn't trade the formula for transparent aluminium for a small run of the stuff. He trades for a quantity of perspex.
Dr. Nichols says it'll take him "years to even calculate the matrix". Besides that, the stuff they delivered and installed was clearly perspex - it would have been much thinner had it been transparent aluminium.
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.
How will the rest of the world recognize us if our tinfoils hats are transparent?
Unfortunately, from the article it seems ALONtm is noted for it's high compressive strength, whereas to build the sides of a whale-sized bath you need high tensile strength. Unless of course it's a particularly aggressive whale and keeps shooting armour-piercing rounds at the side of the bath, but then the bigger question would be "how did it pull the trigger"?
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.
For example, a glass bottle can be broken by putting a little sand into it and shaking vigorously. It's mainly the scraping action, not the weight of the sand, that causes the glass to break.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
You're at the 58th floor of a building.
There is a fire. You can't use the stairs or elevators.
A)You break the glass, jump out and fall to your death.
B)You don't break the glass and suffocated because of the smoke.
Either way, you're toast.
Wrong...
A) You're jam
B) You're toast
The difference isn't subtle.
a) cost of a sandwich :
:p)
about 1$
b) cost of a research to invent invisible aluminium :
about 1 zillion $
c) the face of your boss when he takes a bite of
his lunch and appears to have mouth full of cutting metal :
priceless
----
it would be cool to "see" a pc case made out of it thou (obviously you cant see it but you can pretend it's there
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
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's crazy how many people use loose instead of lose though. All those lil kids and wikipedians online these days are so impressionable you know, and the more instances that slide through, the more the problem will propagate. Capital punishment seems to be the way to go.
which is totally what she said
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"In a June 2004demonstration, an ALONtm test pieces held up to both a .30 caliber Russian M-44 sniper rifle [...]"
Never trust a journalist to get gun facts straight.
The M44 is a carbine version of the Mosin-Nagant, very short, easy to carry, but with nothing better than iron sights. It is about as far from a "sniper rifle" as anything you can see.
It has the coolest integral bayonet, though.
On the upside, the M-44 uses the same cartridge as the current Romanian "sniper" rifle, the PSL. The M44 has a short barrel so a steel-cored 7.62x54R projectile won't reach the same sort of velocities as it would out of a PSL rifle but it should be a pretty effective test against the sort of "armor piercing" light arms that any terrorist not carrying an RPG would be likely to have handy.
it would be cool to "see" a pc case made out of it thou (obviously you cant see it but you can pretend it's there :p)
You mean the way uoi can't see a case made oud of acrylic?
Damn, I had a drinking glass full of water on the table somewhere, if only it weren't invisible I could find it....oh yeah, clear != invisible.
Scotty didn't exchange the formula for a small run of transparent aluminum, it would have taken years for the plant to study the formula and tool up their factory to produce the stuff. He traded the formula for a large, thick sheet of plexiglass or similar that the company would have had on hand or actually be able to manufacture at that time.
University - a box of academia nuts.
But that does beg the question, what are we going to do with all those bodies?
At my age I find coming up with a witty signature too exhausting.
While you're spending your $1z on research, can you find out if transparent aluminum foil protects from government mind control rays as well as regular aluminum foil? Not that I'll believe your government-funded 'research'.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
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.
www.eFax.com are spammers
can you find out if transparent aluminum foil protects from government mind control rays as well as regular aluminum foil?
Yes, it does. It is even much, much better, so change your regular with the transparent one.
Not that I'll believe your government-funded 'research'.
Oh, in that case: The transparent version does NOT protect you. The regular one is much better.
Now that I wrote that, you rpobably think the regular one is better. See? We are already in your head.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Polishing (like case hardening) belongs to a normal metallic property called work hardening. You work a metal it will become harder (but normally also more brittle). In fact it is rarer to have a metal that won't work harden than not. Time to go back to metal shop!!
Go back? Ok, I'm in one every day.
While you're right about metals work hardening, you're wrong about how often it happens. Quite frankly, it doesn't unless you're either extremely stupid or even more so insane. Even soft magnetics like Cast Iron don't work harden until extremely high temperatures are reached. Something to the tune of 650-1100F, depending on the hardness rating you wish to achieve. If you're reaching temperatures that high before the part is finished, well, you're either cutting it off at the foundry or you're about to be fired. The methods used to actually harden materials in a noticeable fashion are specifically designed to superheat the part. Magnetics such as steel and any iron based material will be heated until red, blue or white hot to achieve hardening. This process is called annealing. Other metals are generally coated with a harder metal, not more than a thousand of an inch or two in thickness; this generally achieves the same affect.
Polishing however, is not generally meant to harden, and rarely does. When a part or surface is polished, part of that surface is actually worn away while polish is deposited. This is the only way to achieve mirror finish, if the part has been turned or faced the surface will have markings on it from the tools used to cut it. Polishing is the process of actually wearing away material to relieve the markings, and depositing polish to increase shine. People should note that the more reflective a metal surface is, the finer the finish. Mirror finish generally denotes a "256 dp finish", required often by aerospace or military applications. The dumbass of a parent knows nothing of what he's talking about, and needs himself to open up a machinist's handbook.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
So this new transparent aluminum is roughly 9.46 × 10^12 kilometres ahead of glass?
it's crazy how many people use loose instead of lose though.
Yeah, what loosers!
Since you mentioned it, I went to the IUPAC website and searched for "Aluminum". You know what came up? Hundreds of IUPAC journals with the word spelled that way. Clearly they don't find it mangled or deviant enough to edit in their publications. Dude.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
He did. The big piece of plexi, and the use of the Plexicorp helicopter. Lots of people assumed it was transparent aluminum because they weren't listening to Dr. Nichols when he said, "It'd take years just to figure out the dynamics of these matrices..."
Ugh. I shouldn't have known that part verbatim.
I had a sucky sig.
http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html#Engl ish
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--Basilius
English is essentially an imprecise dialect of Java, without the object orientation.
--Julian Morrison
English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary.
--Eugene Holman
English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.
--Benct Philip Jonsson
English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone.
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--Danny Weir
English is essentially Anglo-Saxon with all the cool bits taken out.
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I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
It's amazing to me how many in the Slashdot crowd will jump up and down screaming about standards compliance until it comes to written English, whereupon the rules (i.e. - standards) are apparently taken as meaningless.
"In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. In 1812 he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root. The same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum, and proposed the name aluminium."
So aluminum was the first spelling, which was later change by language nazis because it didn't sound right.
Don't blame us Americans for trying to be historically accurate.
Transparent Aliminum has been around for all our lifetimes: Sapphire = Aluminum Oxide. My watch has a sapphire crystal... Yours might too.