Introducing Magnet-Responsive Memory Foam

Roland Piquepaille writes "The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force. This polycrystalline nickel-manganese-gallium alloy is potentially cheaper and lighter than other materials currently used in devices ranging from sonar to precision valves. It also could be used to design biomedical pumps without moving parts and even for space applications and automobiles."

Comments

Re:Moving parts

[compumike]

Correct. The big design concerns (and eventual failure points) in pumps, and even fans, are bearings and rotating seals. But there are already implantable heart pumps which rely on the principles of active magnetic levitation to remove the need for contact bearings. See this article for an example.

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Coder? Want to learn electronics? Microcontroller kits.

Re:Offtopic: Roland

[dbIII]

He is in the habit of making grand world changing announcements that unfortuately are not true because either he completely misunderstood the subject matter or if he did get it right the world changed forty years ago. None of his mistakes have needed more than two fifteen year old first year University textbook to point out - one in introductory materials science and one in introductory thermodynamics. There was a linking issue and advertisements at the end of the link some time ago that annoyed people but he doesn't do it anymore.

He's puts in a lot more effort than Dvorak but it's still annoying when a tech journalist gets things wildly wrong.