Liquid Armor the New Bulletproof Vest

kjh1 writes "Armor Holdings Inc. plans to start selling their 'liquid armor' next year. The new armor, originally envisioned to be spread on like peanut butter, is instead sprayed onto Kevlar in ultrathin coats. From the article: 'it's a mix of polyethylene glycol, a polymer found in laxatives and other consumer products, and nanobits of silica, or purified sand. Together they produce a "sheer-thickening liquid" that stiffens instantly into a shield when hit hard by an object. It reverts to its liquid state just as fast when the energy from the projectile dissipates.'"

Comments

Magic Chocolate

[dustpuppy]

... they found that the materials worked best when painted on Kevlar in ultrathin coats. By holding the fibers tight like a flexible glue, the compound spreads out the impact of a blow better than fibers alone.

Imagine the practical jokes you could play with this stuff ... smear a thin coating on eggs and watch as your housemate tries to crack them in the morning. Or smear it on a trampoline ... the more they try and jump up and down, the less bounce they get. Or if you could blow bubbles with this stuff ... would you be able to pop them?

Re:Magic Chocolate

[Ohreally_factor]

I'm wondering if you could effectively immobilize someone wearing this armor by shooting them with a sonic canon.

Gloves

[Joebert]

While liquid armor seems tailor-made for combat personnel or police, the company is initially targeting prisons because the fabric resists punctures. That means it can protect guards from stabbings, something even a top-of-the-line bulletproof vest can't do.

Can they produce gloves able to stand up to shark bites ?
How about gloves for butchers ?
Would they be cheaper to produce than the steel-ring gloves used today ?
Are they water proof ?
How do they react to heat; could they be used in motorcycle clothing ?

Custard

[Turn-X Alphonse]

So basicly they're making military use custard (being gentle will let you penetrate it, but use force and you bounce off). Buug how will this stand up against a knife or a bayonet? I know in the modern era this is more or less mute, but it's still something I'd personally wonder about.

Re:Oobleck

[tumbleweedsi]

I saw a thing on Brainiac where they filled a swimming pool full of cornflour and water and got a guy to walk on it... it was ok so long as he kept moving but as soon as he stopped he sank pretty quickly.

Getting out was pretty hard as the more he pulled the more it turned like concrete... pretty scary if you start sinking in this stuff and have nothing to hang on to!

Re:Other Applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Try as I might, complete with diagrams and models, I could not get across the idea that this was a good thing, and that had the car not done the crumpling, the passengers would have - and who cares if the car's repairable when everyone in it's dead?

This is a common fallacy when people have just a rudimentary understanding of physics and no other applicable knowledge. A car that crumples well is only definitely better when it's car vs much more massive stationary solid object (e.g., a rock face). When it's two cars, however, it's more like the game theory example of the prisoner's dilemma. If both cars crumple well, then it's fairly good for both. If, however, one vehicle is both more rigid and more massive—something common to older cars—then the situation is greatly weighted in that vehicle's favor. An extreme example of this would be an M1 Abrams vs a small Toyota.

Thus, if you don't give a shit about the other guys as long as your kids are safe, and you're not a drunk/wreckless driver that is likely to slam into a building/rock face/telephone pole/whatever, the safest option may well be the biggest, heaviest vehicle with a strong frame that you can possibly find.

Snow Crash

[Dr_Barnowl]

Sounds like the stuff that Hiro Protagonist wears to deliver pizza..

"Sintered Armorgel ; feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books"

Maybe they should ask Neal Stephenson about using that as an ad slogan.

Re:Other Applications

[AndersOSU]

The real selling point of this stuff in car finishes wouldn't be that your car is now bullet proof (although that would make a good bullet point in the brochure.)

Consider this:

We drove this new Ford(TM) Mustang(TM) with DuPont(TM) Protectoguard(TM) coating on the Jersy turnpike, for 200 miles, in construction, behind a Peterbuilt(TM) dumptruck. We recorded 390 discrete stone strikes. But thanks to the Miricles of Science (TM) there isn't a single paint chip in the finish. Blah Blah Blah. Now that's a BOLD move.(TM)