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Paper Stronger Than Cast Iron
TaeKwonDood writes "All paper is made of cellulose, which at the nanoscale level is quite strong, but paper processing makes large, fragile fibers that break easily. Researchers in Sweden have have come up with a manufacturing process that keeps the fibers small, resulting in 'nanopaper' with over 1.6 times the tensile strength of cast iron (214 megapascals vs. 130 mPa). And since cellulose is the most abundant organic compound on the planet, it's cheap to use compared to other exotic, expensive-to-produce options — such as carbon nanotubes."
It's strong enough to build a ship out of... as long as you don't get it wet.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Coming next summer, the Epic battle between Robert Downy Jr. as Iron Man, and an unknown antagonists who goes by the mysterious PAPER MAN! /attempt at humor
Or treatable to be fire-resistant?
I can see a lot of uses for it even if it isn't. But I can see some fairly awe-inspiring ones if it's possible.
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THANK GOD!!!
> 214 megapascals vs. 130 mPa
214 megapascal (singular, it's a unit) is about 1.6*10^9 more than 130 millipascal. Use your units properly.
It's just like irony but stronger
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Perfect for government documents and voting machine audit results. :)
This is going to mess up so many games of Paper, Rock, and Scissors.
Oops, just RTFA'd. They didn't show that paper was as strong as paper. They made paper twice as strong as old "high strength" paper. Which still has very, very little tensile strength. Comparing to cast iron really doesn't help their case.
Wait, so paper beats scissors now?
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With the paper there is the advantage that small particle sizes dramaticly increase strength.
Fantastic!
Tm
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wood has the highest tensile strength of any building material known to man based either on weight or cross sectional area.
No, steel does. That's why I-beams are steel, not wood. It's also why the cables in suspension bridges are steel, not wood poles.
Not a lot of our building techniques rely primarily on tensile strength, most rely on spanning gaps with weight bearing members.
And what determines how well you can span a gap? A combination of compressive and tensile strength. You need to revise your beam bending...
Tensile strength does come into play on collapsing structures, as weight bearing members are removed, and buildings end up hanging from their walls or rafters.
So what does some in to play? Probably a mixture of tensile and compressive strength, depending on what is failing and why.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
But... cast iron has the tensile strength on the order of concrete.
I think you might be two orders of magnitude off. Cast iron shows up as having around 130 to 200MPa (depending on your figures), concrete shows up at 3MPa. Having used it, cast iron can be pretty cheesy stuff. But I imagine that strength-to-weight is pretty good.
Icebike wrote
>...wood has the highest tensile strength of any building material known to man based either on weight or cross sectional area.
I Think your estimate of wood is much too high. Wikipedia's article of tensile strength http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength lists pine wood at 40 MPa I know there are some woods that are significantly stronger but still.
For comparison some other tensile strengths listed in MPa are:
Cast Iron 200
structural steel 400
steel piano wire 2500
Concrete 3
HDPE plastic 37
Aluminum Aloy 455
Glass 4710
Carbon fiber 5650
Carbon nanotubes 63000
> No, steel does. That's why I-beams are steel, not
> wood. It's also why the cables in suspension
> bridges are steel, not wood poles.
The same weight of wood would be stronger.
Some respect has to be paid to longevity. Who would use wood suspension cables in termite country?
There are also problems of attaching wood to other objects. Hard to weld wood you know.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
but where does this leave me?
Like Paper Construction Cranes?
signature is pants
Cuz Paper beats Rock!
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Even when adjusting for weight, the tensile strength of wood isn't so great compared to S-glass or carbon fiber. And when adjusting for cross sectional area, the tensile strength of wood fares even worse because it has a lot of air in its pores.
The same weight of wood would be stronger.
But not the same cross-sectional size.
"Ever tried writing on iron? Not as easy... and folding it to put it in your pocket tends to be difficult."
However, if you etch a piece of metal, you can use it as a stamp to create numerous copies of the etching, and when you hit severe writers block, its much easier to kill yourself with a piece of tin than paper cuts.
The only conclusion I can come to is that I am superman
Apparently Superman didn't take simple physics at school otherwise he would know what tensile strength meant...
If it's loaded in pure tension, you're right, wood is stronger per unit weight. However one thing that you have be careful of with wood beams is that wood has a very low shear strength which makes beams fail at much lower loads than you would expect from the tensile strength alone. It also isn't very strong in tension across the grain which limits your design freedom.
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Anyone who has ever used a public toilet in Sweden would know that this has been in development for some time.
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