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Transparent Aluminum a Reality

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the how-quaint dept.

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."

26 of 759 comments (clear)

  1. A Great Send-Off by jIyajbe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:A Great Send-Off by SteveAyre · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sorry but no, you must be wrong.

      I just checked and I can't find any missing whales anywhere.

  2. Hmm by psilonaut · · Score: 5, Funny

    How quaint.

  3. The article is disappointing by kg_o.O · · Score: 5, Funny

    No pics :(

    1. Re:The article is disappointing by GroeFaZ · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nothing for you to see here. Move along.

      --
      The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
    2. Re:The article is disappointing by Erik+Hensema · · Score: 5, Funny

      Using some elite slashdot h4x0ring skillz, I am able to post a picture of transparent aluminum right here for you:








      Nice, eh?

      --

      This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.

  4. transparent oxide-nitride, not a metal by Muhammar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  5. soda by Cave_Monster · · Score: 5, Funny
    Does anyone remember being told when they were a child, not to leave your can of drink open while outside for fear of a wasp/bee getting inside and consequently a painful next sip?

    Perhaps with this technology we can have see-through cans and this will no longer be a problem :)

  6. iPod Nano screen by jabuzz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sound just what Apple need to make some scratch resistant screens for the iPod Nano :)

  7. IPOD nano needs this stuff by blackomegax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  8. no doubt patented already... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  9. Note to mods: by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Informative
    The parent isn't offtopic; you just didn't get the Star Trek IV reference:

    [after Scotty tries to talk into the mouse]

    TECHNICIAN: "Just use the keyboard!"

    SCOTTY: "The keyboard? How quaint."
    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  10. Sapphire by obender · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  11. Re:hmm by B2382F29 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, that would cost you an arm and a leg ... either way.

    --
    Move Sig. For great justice.
  12. Re:Super Polish by AGMW · · Score: 5, Funny
    Double the strength by polishing?

    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
  13. Re:How's it pronounced? by Tidal+Flame · · Score: 5, Informative
    Either, really. It can be pronounced and spelled either aluminum or aluminium. Typically, Americans and Canadians pronounce and spell it "aluminum." I can't speak for other countries...

    Here's the history behind the difference (from the Wikipedia article):
    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.

    "Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. (Q. Review VIII. 72, 1812. Cited in OED.)"

    This had the advantage of conforming to the -ium suffix precedent set by other newly discovered elements of the period: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time: platinum, which had been known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, which was discovered in 1778, and tantalum, which was discovered in 1802, all have spellings ending in -um. For the thirty years following its discovery, both the -um and -ium endings were used interchangeably in the scientific literature.

    Curiously, the United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However Charles Martin Hall selected the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, four years after he had patented the process in 1888. Although this spelling may have been an accident, Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version.

    In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications, and American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant.
  14. Transparent Tin Foil Hats by wangotango · · Score: 5, Funny

    How will the rest of the world recognize us if our tinfoils hats are transparent?

  15. Re:Humvee Windshields by hidispenser · · Score: 5, Informative

    Humvees normally cost the military about $125,000 each. Installing Level I (the highest) armor costs an additional $125,000. http://www.reflector.com/news/content/shared/news/ world/stories/08/11TROOPS_ARMOR.html/ The article in the link states that the military's goal is to get every Humvee in the fleet to that state of armor. So $16,560 to $24,840 is therefore reasonable for an entire fleet to have.

  16. nearly, but not quite... by williamhb · · Score: 5, Funny

    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"?

  17. Re:Super Polish by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Actually, strength from polishing is a pretty basic idea in material science. It comes down to the fact that materials break due to initial cracks that grow bigger under stress. If the cracks are initially larger, the material is more fragile.

    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.
  18. Re:Ooooh. -- wrong by mr_z_beeblebrox · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  19. Pictures by pev · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  20. Re:Unintended joke? by somersault · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  21. Re:Aluminium Reality or Aluminum Realty? by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's the funny thing about language - it changes. Sometimes for a good reason, sometimes for a bad reason. Resisting that will doom you to a life of, well, posting frustrated comments on slashdot complaining about how people spell aluminum. In particular, this "mispronunciation" is about 100 years old, and no amount of slashdot posting is going to change that. Move on.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  22. Standards compliance by SkippyTPE · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  23. Sapphire is transparent Aluminum by Chuck_McDevitt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Transparent Aliminum has been around for all our lifetimes: Sapphire = Aluminum Oxide. My watch has a sapphire crystal... Yours might too.