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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.'"
There's a video on break.com where you can see the liquid armor in action - it's pretty amazing:
clicky
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
First the military is developing something called an "ultrasonic tourniquet", now somebody is making bulletproof peanut butter?? Fuck this shit, the universe is just too weird right now. I am going to bed.
"it's a mix of polyethylene glycol, a polymer found in laxatives..."
As if having a gun fired at you isn't enough to make you shit your pants...
But how much would it cost to coat your car in this stuff? And would it give extra protection?
Nope, not if it's your safety you're worried about, rather than the cars. You want the car to deform, so your decelleration slows down. Just like a helmet, you want it to break so you don't.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Product Announcement! New, glistening panty-hose. Shimmering as if they're wet. Catches eyes. Attracts only the daring. Promotes celibacy and abstinence!
... humiliation as you try again and again, unable to even stretch the panty-chasty-hose. The situation goes... limp.
In the heat of the moment, you push her against the wall and kiss. Heat. Fire. Desire. You reach down below her skirt, and trying to be spontanious, rip at her pantyhose... but wait! No satisfying tear or gasp escape from her lips...
"Liqui-hose, helping you dodge a bullet every night."
...but look down. We'd have joined each other in death.
--Dune
Can they produce gloves able to stand up to shark bites ?
Thereby forcing sharks to evolve frickin' lasers on their heads.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
if ... you're not a drunk/wreckless driver that is likely to slam into a building/rock face/telephone pole/whatever
I would think it very unlikely that a driver reckless enough to be likely to slam into buildings or rock faces would remain wreckless for long.
Darn. Now I'll have to respec my Rogue to use maces instead of daggers.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The eggs one won't work, because the eggshell is rigid, and so provides no shear force on the coating. The trampoline one should work, but the effect you'd feel is negligible - this stuff works well at the speed of bullets, but at that small thickness you'd get little effect at the speed of a person's bounce. If you could get bubbles to work, then they'd still pop - they'd just pop slowly, since as the sides pull away from the initial point of zero thickness they'd cap their own speed.
Yeah, I did projects on this stuff. You can make some yourself with 1 part water and 1.44 parts cornflour; put it in at 1:1.3, then continue to add the rest of the flour while pouring. It'll get difficult to mix (don't do it in a machine, you'll break the machine, it's like stirring rocks at that speed) but a minute of perseverance will give you something you can bounce your thumb off or sink your finger in. Good fun. Kids love it, and it's easy to clean off; if it gets onto clothes then it just rinses out.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Your example relies on a signficant difference in mass as well as overall rigidity of the two vehicles in question. Deformable frames being about absorbing energy (and momentum, being an inelastic collision) in an impact. An M1 brings way more Kinetic Energy to the impact than can be absorbed by a deforming frame of a Toyota.
The safety of the passengers is dependent on how quickly the vehicle passenger compartment decelerates, as that will determine with what force they impact the interior of the vehicle (the so-called "second impact"). The M1 will not decelerate very much, but it is because of the mass disparity, not that it is rigid.
Obviously a crumple zone cannot absorb an unlimited amount of energy, but up to the amount it can absorb it is definitely good for you, whether you are hitting something rigid or not.
Actually, this is not true. I've got some friends who do car safety analysis all the time and they say that a modern crumple zone + rigid passenger egg is safer than a rigid car or light truck in a collision - the crumple zone absorbs most of its car's energy and the rigid car flips over.
There are many dead SUV drivers to disprove your claim.
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)
Where on earth did you grow up that old wives talk about knife-fighting while wearing kevlar?
I hate printers.
If this is really what you bought it for (and actually do), Congratulations. You are one of the 0.5 % of SUV owners who actually should own an SUV. Unfortunately, 99.5 % of them are owened by soccer moms and men who need to overcompensate for something, and are just endangering us all on the roads, and burning very excessive amounts of gasoline.
Teflon-coated bullets are teflon coated to reduce barrel wear, not to provide any performance increase with respect to penetrative capabilities. Other lubricants are often used, but teflon works very well even with high velocity projectiles. Handloaders who shoot USPSA/IPSC handgun competitions often lube their bullets to decrease wear on their 1000USD high-polish barrels. "Cop-killer" is a sensationalist name first applied to Teflon-coated bullets and later to Jacketed Hollow Points when that term was all the rage in the liberal media. Remember, only YOU can prevent the spread of FUD!