Slashdot Mirror
Graphene May Top Kevlar As a Bullet-Stopping Material
The Royal Society of Chemistry reports that U.S. researchers Edwin Thomas and Jae-Hwang Lee have been testing the strength of graphene mesh in one role it's probably destined to appear in down the road: as ballistic shielding material. From the article: We cannot use conventional techniques such as a gun barrel or gunpowder [on this scale],’ explains Lee. ‘Instead we used a laser to accelerate a microscale silica bullet [at the multilayer graphene target].’
The bullet was propelled into stacked graphene sheets at supersonic speeds of up to 2000mph by the gases produced by laser pulses rapidly evaporating a gold film. The team calculated the energy difference of the bullet before and after to determine the energy absorbed.
Neil Bourne, director of the National Centre for Matter under Extreme Conditions in the UK, who was not involved in the research, described the technique as ‘very exciting’. ‘They have taken a standard laboratory ballistics configuration and demonstrated its utility on microscopic scales,’ he says.
Graphene was able to absorb up to 0.92MJ/kg of ballistic energy in the test, with cracks forming around the impact zone. By comparison, steel targets only absorbed up to 0.08MJ/kg at the same speed.
I've strapped a 3D printer on my back, if someone shoots at me I just say "3D printer! Body armor!" and it 3D prints a shell of graphene all around my body!
Yeah boy! It's the future and the game has changed!!!!
Every day I'm seeing something about how they can pump the stuff out of a damn DVD burner and how it is great at being a capacitor and all this other stuff.
And yet nothing that contains this technology.
WHY?
It is really fucking annoying to be told all these things are happening and then have no way to access any of it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The safety.
Education.
Your attempt to act like the way you "think" an outspoken right leaner would is comically sad. Don't you have another journalist to sign up for, to receive your marching orders?
No one but a reporter talks about bullets in miles per hour. 2000 MPH is about 3000 feet per second.
A typical handgun bullet (9mm, 45 ACP, etc) is going to be around 1000 to 1500 fps. Shoulder arms (223, 308, 30-06, etc) tend towards the 2500-3000 fps range.
The MJ/kg figures refer to Specific kinetic energy. To convert it to foot-pounds, you need to multiply it by the mass of the projectile to find the energy in joules, then multiply by 0.73756 (or do the dimensional analysis the hard way).
See that "Preview" button?
One wonders how graphene fares against bullets made from graphene.
For sane units, 2000 mph ~= 900 m/s.
p.s. I'm an American, and I only use mph for driving speeds.
Graphene's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!
It's a shirt, it's a sock, it's a glove, it's a hat!
But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that!
You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!
Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!
Out of the old physics lab
Comes some more graphene
Answering humanity's
Each and every need
Everybody do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do
Needs graphene!
It isn't just a tanning vest
Use it for a hammock
When you need rest
It's a toothbrush holder
For your weekend guest
Your canary will love it,
It's a lovely nest
Try it in soup-
It adds great zest
It'll cure those
Backache pains in your chest
Everybody do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do
Needs graphene!
You'll be amazed
you'll be nonplussed
It tastes like bread
without the crust
Grooms your hair
when it gets mussed
Rids your home of dismal dust
It's a natural, it's a must
Eliminates carburetor rust
Everybody do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do
Needs graphene!
It's super duper hooper hyper
Makes a perfect windshield wiper
Foolproof trap to catch a viper
we've no complaints from any griper
Papa smokes 'em in his piper
Baby says "boy, what a diaper!"
Everybody do-do-do-do-do-do
Everybody do-do-do-do-do-do
Everybody do-do-do-do needs graphene!!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
For sane units, 2000 mph ~= 900 m/s.
p.s. I'm an American, and I only use mph for driving speeds.
Thank you for bringing some much needed dimensional perspective because I can't understand a friggin' thing the GP wrote.
Can someone provide a car analogy with the equivalent number of Libraries of Congress?
I wonder if the properties of graphene will remain the same when scaled up to normal size.
nuff said.
Who cares about bullets. I mean how often does the average person encounter bullets impacting their body? The real question is: Will this be any better than the Kevlar and leather motorcycle gear we have?
Microscopic guys wrapped in microscopic graphene body armour,
protected from microscopic bullets.
It's the way of the future man.
I want some of what he's smoking.
Go well
I'd much prefer a soft armor capable of stopping a .308WIN at 50 yards..
Essentially, right now it is really really difficult to work with graphene on an industrial scale.
If you want to work with it in the lab, you get yourself some graphite (essentially pencil lead), some scotch tape, some solvents and you're done. It is dirt cheap and, given a good microscope and a steady hand, not too difficult to work with.
But of course this is no way to work with it on any larger scale. You want to be able to produce a certain amount of it, reliably and precisely. No flaws in the graphene crystal. No multi-layer graphene (which in fact is one of the toughest things to avoid).
This is all really difficult right now.
The situation was similar for transistors, if you recall: the first solid-state transistor was invented in 1947 (by 1956 Nobel prize winners John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley), but it took until the 1960s for ICs to take off (Jack Kilby, 2000 Nobel prize winner, is usually pointed out as the culprit). It took until 2004 (!) for the first single-layer graphene to be isolated (by 2010 Nobel prize winners Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov). So expect the first industrial application of graphene somewhere around the end of this decade, and some patent wars around 2019-2025, and then a Nobel prize for the inventor of whatever industrial process we will be using, around 2040.
From Imperial to S.I. and then back out again is sane units? Didn't you guys throw the British out so you didn't have to Chain yourselves in Knots?
Kevlar tactical vests, being essentially a ballistic, polymer weave, have a shelf life of only about 3-5 years or so before they lose their power to slow and stop bullets. Apparently the strength of the polymer degrades over time, especially with repeat exposure so heat and UV. I would be curious if the graphene-based body armor is stronger and with a longer shelf life.
They prevent phase distortion of asymmetric transients, which gives a more robust stereo footprint.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"The bullet was propelled into stacked graphene sheets at supersonic speeds of up to 2000mph by the gases produced by laser pulses rapidly evaporating a gold film"
This sounds expensive. I wonder why gold was the "propellant" of choice.
WTF Captcha: "retriers" - since when are words that aren't even recognized by webster being used? I had to use the MP3 option just to figure it out.
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retriers)
When someone is predicting something to occur 10 years in the future, then claim that the time frame they are predicting is actually 10 to infinity years in the future, they are completely fucking lying about knowing whats going to be happening 10 years out and their predictions are completely useless. Futurologists are full of shit. The ones that do get it right only do so at a rate slightly higher than pure chance. You might as well ask an astrologer for their technology predictions. Statistically the will be equal in the accuracy of their predictions.
>We cannot use conventional techniques such as a gun barrel or gunpowder [on this scale]
this means they essentially made bulletproof vest for a LEGO figurine, or a green army men
> 2000mph by the gases produced by laser pulses rapidly evaporating a gold film
yep, it will work great next time someone wants to shoot a speck of DUST at you
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
I dare you to make less sense.
Just go straight to the Ell Donsaii author and ask him how he feels about the technological potential of carbon.
(for the humor impaired, I'm kidding. Ell Donsaii novels are like soap operas for nerds, kind of like "so bad, they're good" movies. I recommend reading the first book to see if you like it, and I believe the first book is free as an e-book on Kindle. It's not until a couple books later that you get into the really scifi stuff.)
Hope nobody invents quantum-tunneling bullets.
I found a cool infographic of the experiment: http://drawscience.blogspot.com/2014/11/graphene-is-new-kevlar.html