Slashdot Mirror
The Orange Goo That Could Save Your Laptop
Barence writes "A British company has patented what can only be described as an orange goo that could save your laptop or iPod after a nasty fall. The amazing material is soft and malleable like putty, but the substance becomes solid instantly after impact. You can punch your fist into a ball of the material sitting on a desk and not feel a thing, according to the staff at PC Pro who have been testing the material, called 3do. It's being used by the military, the US downhill ski team, and motorcycle clothing manufacturers to provide impact protection in the event of a crash. However, it's also appearing in protective cases for laptops and MP3 players."
First of, it's 3do (three-dee-oh): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D3o
3DO was a video game company and console: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_3DO_Company
This product, as applied to laptop cases, was recently pitched on Dragon's Den (BBC): http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/entrepreneurs/jasonroberts.shtml
http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_mud
14 September 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EBWGbhsuws
Presumably the energy is absorbed by it turning solid. Similar in principle (in vague terms) to how the bonnet of a car (hood to USA people) is designed to crumple so that it absorbs the energy of a crash. Afterwards the bonnet is more condensed - harder - but the energy went into making it so, rather than getting transferred on to the rest of the car and the passengers.
Well the front of normal cars is designed to do that. SUVs are designed to kill people.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
We have a video test of the iBand that shows how d3o works and features a drop test. http://recombu.com/news/tech21-iband-serious-impact-protection-proved-on-video-_M11064-1.html
A squishy material just softens the impact by slowing the deceleration of your momentum. The problem is if the impact force is high you need a lot of padding to soften the blow. By turning solid on impact you material instantly distributes all this force over a large area i.e. all the force isn't released on e.g. the corner of your laptop causing it to shatter. This is similar to putting a hard cover around your object (like a motorcycle helmet). The advantage of this material is that is is flexible in it's normal state so it can met integrated in clothing etc without limiting movement.
This video has a great example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JceDaEMIHKE&feature=related
They use a cap with the material to protect a watermelon from impact with a hammer. With a normal squishy material you'd need a really thick layer to soften a blow like that and a hard material would restrict movement.
It's a kind of best of both worlds solution.
It is very similar to silly putty except that it does not "run" when left sitting on a table. The last thing you want your armor to do is pool around your waste.
My guess is they somehow increased the stiffness of it at the low-velocity stage.
If the padding is an eighth of an inch thick, it will provide, at most, an eighth of an inch of extra speed reduction.
Speed reduction is not measured in inches.
The idea is that the "impulse" (the change in momentum) is spread out more evenly over the eighth of an inch, so that the maximum force *at any single point in time* is reduced.
The behavior of this stuff sounds a bit like the Smart Mass Thinking Putty I have from ThinkGeek.com.
You don't think enough... therefore you better not be!
Well... we all know what's in this stuff don't we ? It's custard (possibly with some orange food colorant).
The behavior described here is identical to that exhibited by custard and other liquids with low viscosity but high surface tension. The effect is that low velocity impacts are passed through easily but high velocity impact causes the surface tension to rapidly increase and prevents entry. To put it bluntly, you can run over a swimming pool full of custard, but you can't walk over one (brainiac did an episode on it, though they could have done a better job of explaining the theory about why it works that way - wikipedia is your friend here - as per their usual script, they were mostly interested in the fun-value of a swimming pool full of custard... the test subject did indeed run over it until he got to the middle, was told to stop... and then sank).
Now I'm sure it's not actually custard in this goo (well, fairly sure) but the phenomenon is certainly not new and has been known for a while. What seems new is that this is a much lower liquidity and viscosity than most of these substances (it appears to be at the level of clay or playdough rather than a flowing liquid) - which clearly makes for a whole new range of practical applications, since it won't soak into things or leak, you can make things like laptop protective cases lined with the stuff which would be impractical with custard....
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
To be clear, I meant IBM invented/introduced it before apple started buying hard disks featuring the tech.
that it's not OOBLECK? http://www.kinderteacher.com/oobleck.htm
Please don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothin' new to say.
Hiro is Snow Crash's Protagonist.
It sounds a little bit like what you get when you mix cornstarch and water. If you press it slowly, your finger sinks right in as if it's liquid, if you hit it hard, it's solid.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's worth noting that many laptops now have "active drive protection" by some name - basically accelerometers detect drops and immediately park the heads of the drive - hopefully before the end of the fall.
fencepost
just a little off
Hard Drive Active Protection System; around in ThinkPads since about 2003.
Sudden Motion Sensor; Macbooks since 2005.
Impact armor was in Ringworld Engineers, not Ringworld.
SUV's only roll over due to stupid drivers. you really have to make a sharp fast turn to roll an SUV. Like 90 turn at 50mph.
The biggest probleem is that the average driver can't adjust their driving depending on the type of vehicle. Going from sports car to SUV is very different. They don't handle the same.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
My SUV is designed so that it's frame doesn't distort when pulling with a winch. A side effect of that is that it has a rigid frame. Too bad for me, but its a decision I made when selecting it.
Rigid under tension is not the same as rigid under compression. Most SUV's are designed with hardened points for towing (tension) but they still have crush zones for accidents (compression). In fact, because of the size, the crush zones in an SUV are often larger and more effective than those in a smaller car.
Overall, you are safer in an accident when you are in an SUV than when you are in a smaller car. Of course, this does vary according to the type of accident and overall safety design of the vehicle. You also have to factor in that SUV's are more susceptible to some kinds of accidents than other cars.
Sapere aude!