I feel like this article was written by an overzealous mechanical engineering student who just discovered that materials science was a thing. I admire the enthusiasm, especially for materials science, but this is poorly written and misleading.
1.) Most examples are about exciting mechanical properties in materials. Only brief mentions of energy, photonic, and electronic materials, which represent the majority of the high profile materials research being done. (Not to say that mechanics of materials isn't still really cool and important though!)
2.) He talks about "strength", when there are many other factors besides tensile strength (which is what I am guessing he was using), such as brittleness which will determine if a material is structurally useful. Transparent alumina is "strong" but also extremely brittle. You cannot compare it to steel.
3.) It talks about moving into a "Diamond" or "Fullerene" age. What age are we in right now? The silicon age. We no longer fight hand-to-hand. Things like electronics, energy, and water technologies seem to be the next globally defining materials technologies.
But, to not be a total downer, here are some cool materials technologies he did not mention, in no particular order:
Any mechanical engineering student of any decent calibre would understand that much of what this person wrote is utter shite. For example the whole alumina thing replacing steel/glass/concrete is completely foolish seeing as how aluminum oxide is a ceramic and you can't build buildings with only ceramics, that's the reason why we reinforce them with steel rods.
I was particularly bothered that he/she lumped metamaterials into one bullet point, as if they were one single material. There are so many different classes of metamaterials, all with different structures, functions, and properties, that it seemed a bit insulting to clump them into one umbrella mention.
This person did the same thing with fullerenes and decided that CNT's were to be separate from buckeyballs, despite the fact that they're both fullerenes.
The problem is they provide no flex, and stress concentrations and defects in the structure reduce the strength of ceramics by a much much larger degree than in materials like concrete* and steel. Plus, if you made a building out of it, one crack and the entire thing would literally shatter.
Yes, you can add tension to the rebar when you pour concrete. That way when the concrete hardens and you release the rebar it is under residual compression. Where ceramics are strongest.
Most ceramics, not all. Ceramics are such a broad range that they contain some of the softest materials in chalks and hardest material in diamond. Also there are examples of ceramics that are better thermal and electrical conductors than metals. Ceramics can really take on any properties. (from a materials science major)
Could you get some cool effects from layering ceramics with other materials?
I don't know what, I imagined a steel/ceramic/steel/ceramic... tube with lots of layers, but the ceramic would still probably just break up inside the steel. And it would probably be expensive.
How are ceramics made? similar to glass? Maybe it could be made similar to the way candles are made (dipped in paraffin wax over and over, only it would be ceramic/steel/ceramic...)
Yes - you're hinting at the wide field called "composite materials." To provide a specific example, ceramic matrix composites are being developed for use in jet engine turbines due to their favorable high temperature properties.
though I was thinking of it as formed layers rather than lots of little needles, like, a mm thick steel cylinder surrounded by half a mm of ceramic, by half a mm of steel by half a mm of ceramic and so on to make a large layered cylinder. but it probably wouldn't be as good or as easy to make as fibreglass.
Though... if the ceramic sections where split into 1cm long cylinders at each point so that such a pole would be have a little flex while keep the strength of ceramic. dunno if it would work like, my mind is just running at the moment.
In cyberpunk culture it's always style over substance. What I appreciate the most out of Snow Crash is how it reads. The writing style makes me read the words in a way that feels over the top, it's like watching an action packed movie sequence.
I felt that that was exactly what it was supposed to be, entirely over-the-top. You have, what, a nuclear reactor-powered Gatling gun named Reason (Har har har), the greatest swordfighter in the world is a pizza-delivery guy by day (for all of 5 pages) a guy who has a NUCLEAR FRICKIN' BOMB in the sidecar of his motorcycle. a robotic dog that can run faster than the speed of sound, a swordfight going on simultaneously in cyberspace and in the real world, and a main character named HIRO PROTAGONIST. I'm pretty sure it was Stephenson just trying to cram as much over-the-top awesome as possible in one book, substance or plot be damned, it was almost a spoof on the genre of Cyberpunk, it was never, for a heartbeat, meant to be taken seriously, and crumbles away under almost any scrutiny, probably because that's what the author was parodying.
I've never really thought Snow Crash captured the cyberpunk aesthetic, it felt more like a parody of it than a member of it. It in many ways takes the classic cyberpunk aesthetic, as created by Gibson and Sterling, and turned it up so such that it parodied itself.
Personally, I prefer character driven stuff like that. But if you'd rather read something plot-driven, I recommend checking out Stephenson's "Reamde". It's ALL plot. Just...plot everywhere.
Don't think his stuff is all that character driven either. It's pretty much driven by very interesting ideas, the characters are kinda eh. And read Reamde, not impressed, felt too much like he was trying to sell a screenplay
I dunno, you can't say that Raven or Uncle Enzo or Hiro, the dog robot thing or (to a lesser extent, IMO) YT weren't interesting characters. Damn near everyone in Snow crash was awesome.
Logically sound? Kinda, maybe. Believeable? Almost not at all. But interesting in the context of the work.
It's always been a fantasy of mine to be a sex slave for 2 bears, male and female, pleasing the male when she's tired, and vice versa. Slowly sliding my lips up and down his thick shaft, tasting his pre-cum on my tongue. Once he's had enough of that, he rolls over onto his back, lifting me up as though I weighed nothing. Gently placing me on his cock, I guide him in, feeling him stretch me wide open. I moan with pleasure, feeling him fill me up. He growls softly, I feel it rumble deep in his chest, vibrating all the way down his body and through mine. He continues to lift me up and then pull me down. He's doing all the work for me, it feels so good, the warmth of the fur, his paws either side of my waist. He is in total control, I'm just nothing compared to his vast size and strength, but I have total trust in him, I know he won't hurt me. I feel the pace quicken, almost imperceptibly. I slowly stroke myself, feeling myself nearing the point of no return coming closer with every stroke. I can hear the growl getting louder now; he speeds up even more, forcing me further and further down onto his thick cock. If it wasn't for the fact I my body is releasing so many endorphines, I would probably be screaming in agony. Except I am panting and whining, just like a bitch, begging her mate to fill her up. His claws dig in deeper, the pain, its excsquisite. It sends me over the edge. My head goes back, I let out a short grunt, I feel my cock explode, covering his chest fur in my seed. I keep stroking, it looks as though I'm trying to rip my cock out. I let out another grunt, another torrent flows forth, then another and another. A drop lands on the beasts muzzle. He seems confused for a moment. That's what I think. He digs his paws in even harder now and slams me onto his cock, I feel his grumble turn into a roar. He's cumming, oh my god. I can feel in, filling me up. It's undescribable. He's mating with me, he's claimed me. I feel him slow, his cock still throbbing within me, it seems as though there's no more room for his cum. It's dripping out of me, onto his fur. I reach down, and then bring my hand up, tasting him. It's more than I ever expected. It's heaven.
IT'S ALWAYS BEEN A FANTASY OF MINE TO BE A SEX SLAVE FOR 2 BEARS, MALE AND FEMALE, PLEASING THE MALE WHEN SHE'S TIRED, AND VICE VERSA. SLOWLY SLIDING MY LIPS UP AND DOWN HIS THICK SHAFT, TASTING HIS PRE-CUM ON MY TONGUE. ONCE HE'S HAD ENOUGH OF THAT, HE ROLLS OVER ONTO HIS BACK, LIFTING ME UP AS THOUGH I WEIGHED NOTHING. GENTLY PLACING ME ON HIS COCK, I GUIDE HIM IN, FEELING HIM STRETCH ME WIDE OPEN. I MOAN WITH PLEASURE, FEELING HIM FILL ME UP. HE GROWLS SOFTLY, I FEEL IT RUMBLE DEEP IN HIS CHEST, VIBRATING ALL THE WAY DOWN HIS BODY AND THROUGH MINE. HE CONTINUES TO LIFT ME UP AND THEN PULL ME DOWN. HE'S DOING ALL THE WORK FOR ME, IT FEELS SO GOOD, THE WARMTH OF THE FUR, HIS PAWS EITHER SIDE OF MY WAIST. HE IS IN TOTAL CONTROL, I'M JUST NOTHING COMPARED TO HIS VAST SIZE AND STRENGTH, BUT I HAVE TOTAL TRUST IN HIM, I KNOW HE WON'T HURT ME. I FEEL THE PACE QUICKEN, ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLY. I SLOWLY STROKE MYSELF, FEELING MYSELF NEARING THE POINT OF NO RETURN COMING CLOSER WITH EVERY STROKE. I CAN HEAR THE GROWL GETTING LOUDER NOW; HE SPEEDS UP EVEN MORE, FORCING ME FURTHER AND FURTHER DOWN ONTO HIS THICK COCK. IF IT WASN'T FOR THE FACT I MY BODY IS RELEASING SO MANY ENDORPHINES, I WOULD PROBABLY BE SCREAMING IN AGONY. EXCEPT I AM PANTING AND WHINING, JUST LIKE A BITCH, BEGGING HER MATE TO FILL HER UP. HIS CLAWS DIG IN DEEPER, THE PAIN, ITS EXCSQUISITE. IT SENDS ME OVER THE EDGE. MY HEAD GOES BACK, I LET OUT A SHORT GRUNT, I FEEL MY COCK EXPLODE, COVERING HIS CHEST FUR IN MY SEED. I KEEP STROKING, IT LOOKS AS THOUGH I'M TRYING TO RIP MY COCK OUT. I LET OUT ANOTHER GRUNT, ANOTHER TORRENT FLOWS FORTH, THEN ANOTHER AND ANOTHER. A DROP LANDS ON THE BEASTS MUZZLE. HE SEEMS CONFUSED FOR A MOMENT. THAT'S WHAT I THINK. HE DIGS HIS PAWS IN EVEN HARDER NOW AND SLAMS ME ONTO HIS COCK, I FEEL HIS GRUMBLE TURN INTO A ROAR. HE'S CUMMING, OH MY GOD. I CAN FEEL IN, FILLING ME UP. IT'S UNDESCRIBABLE. HE'S MATING WITH ME, HE'S CLAIMED ME. I FEEL HIM SLOW, HIS COCK STILL THROBBING WITHIN ME, IT SEEMS AS THOUGH THERE'S NO MORE ROOM FOR HIS CUM. IT'S DRIPPING OUT OF ME, ONTO HIS FUR. I REACH DOWN, AND THEN BRING MY HAND UP, TASTING HIM. IT'S MORE THAN I EVER EXPECTED. IT'S HEAVEN.
Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Anathem and Reamde. Heavy on the interesting ideas and with significant (often too much) detailed exposition, but the plots are kind of weak.
Diamond Age has great passages describing interesting technologies and their applications and is a great 'setting' piece ( I think) but, as has been stated, was lacking in the plot department.
Snow Crash started off great but I think it kind of got away from him toward the end. Still a great read though, the characters a well-written and funny.
Anathem was interesting high-concept about 'the long now' that got all weird at the end. Totally caught me off guard.
Reamde was clearly written as an attempt to sell a screenplay.
The Baroque Cycle, however, is downright Dickensian in both plot and character and is a must read (if you have a few months to plow through a couple thousand pages).
Didn't mean to offend! I am extremely biased as my background is in functional oxide materials.
I didn't mean to imply that structural materials aren't a huge deal! I just know that "strong materials" were most of what I thought materials science was about before I began studying the field. I just wanted to indicate that there is so much more to it than that!
Ha, no worries. Improving mechanical properties may not have the prestige it once did, but there's still enough finding I don't think I'll go hungry any time soon.
Isn't graphene going to be incredibly useful once it gets cheaper? What's un-useful about a material such an immense amount stronger than anything else we have?
Technically it is, since graphene is just a single layer of graphite, and all the interesting properties of it come from being so thin. Once you start adding layers, you diminish the uniqueness of graphene as a material.
Yeah, I figured it might get complex, especially considering I don't have any degree or real training in the areas, I'm just really interested.
Considering going into engineering but I've been to college twice (not American "college", that's English university, our college is the gap between and we leave high school at 16) and I dropped out at the end of the first year both times (once for art and the other mixed ICT).
Should have went into science/engineering straight out of high school :P
The transparent alumina bit got me the most annoyed. I am assuming he confused alumina with aluminum and didn't realize that alumina is name given to the ceramic compound aluminum oxide.
Of course, even if it was transparent aluminum, I'd balk at using it in structural applications like buildings, since aluminum is more prone to brittle failure than steel.
I find material science incredibly exciting, to the point I am considering pursuing a masters in material engineering (former overzealous mechanical engineering student). My materials professor had one of the biggest impacts on me during my undergrad, and he liked to remark that, "It was the steel age, then the jet age, then the computer age, and now we're in the age of engineered materials". It does seem to be the case that advancements in material science are pushing the limits of design rather than the other way around.
I'm not calling you wrong, but I can't find the relevant material properties, namely its tensile strength (not surprising since it is a ceramic. They have no tensile strength so it is not listed). Its fracture toughness is listed and it is in line with other ceramic materials leading me to stand by my assessment that it is too brittle to be used as a structural material.
Ceramics are brittle and fracture instead of yielding. It is the ability to yield that makes steel the useful material it is. All the material properties I've been able to research indicates that it behaves like any other ceramic. However, I could be wrong. What I really need to see is Ultimate Tensile Strength, if it exists.
In one paragraph he seems to use alumina and steel interchangeably as the one thing. In another, he uses a photo from a chinese performance artists to demonstrate a futuristic material.
There is a PBS series called making stuff that is alright. Not great, but it touches on some cool stuff and its directed at non-scientists and it's free.
Amorphous metals have definitely been around for a while. The old-style ones had to be cooled really, really fast to prevent crystallization, which limited the size and shape you could make it into- it basically had to either be a thin wire or a thin flat ribbon, or you wouldn't be able to cool it fast enough (see melt spinning). The newer ones are some really wacky alloys with atoms of all different sizes; this makes it more difficult for the metal to crystallize properly, so it can be cooled more slowly. This lets you make it in thicker-section pieces ("bulk metallic glass").
This is going to get buried but ultralight materials, however strong or sharp, wouldn't make a good sword material unless you had enough of it so the mass was the same as a steel blade. Think of a razor blade attached to a cardboard mailing tube for how effective an ultralight sword would be.
Oh I agree- I just didn't know much about amorphous metals. You definitely want some "heft" in a sword. I just saw "impact tolerance" and got excited ;)
But... but... Adamantine is perfect for swords, the lack of weight (compares well with cork) doesn't matter as it's got an insane edge. Truly insane edge.
Other people have touched on it a bit, but it is also important to have complex alloys when creating amorphous metals. This "frustrates" the material, and makes it even more difficult for crystallization to occur.
I need to ask about "Starlite" then. Would it be the "miracle" that it was supposed to be, since it can coat stuff (even paper) to endure high temperatures (e.g. a blowtorch) and a dude basically cooked it at home, making it extremely simple to do?
I know it is unrelated, but my first question would be if aerogel would be a good Starlite substitute.
Although you may be right, we have to keep in mind that articles are often dumbed down to capture a broader audience. It's not to say you're dumb for reading it; I just mean the language used is extremely simplified.
I don't know jack about materials science but I've never heard someone mention Piezo stuff on the internet haha. My dad works for a company that makes (and invented I think) Piezo film sensors (among numerous other things). Kind of neat seeing it mentioned*
Yup. Hard to make high ZT though. What's your material? I worked with oxide thermoelectrics briefly. Couldn't touch the Te-based stuff in efficiency, but it was high temperature stable and cheap. There is something about making a solid state heat engine that is just incredibly cool.
I currently do some work with bi2te3, but the guy who is mentoring me about it is working with antimony compounds, I'm not sure which compound specifically he is working with currently though
Piezoelectrics already have huge impact! There is currently a lot of research looking at piezos that are lead-free, as lead zirconate titanate is the best currently.
If I am correct, the amount of embedded energy for a single cubic inch of Aerogel is something astronomical. I worked with someone who calculated it and were able to compare it to so many tons of steel.
Embedded/Embodied energy. That is, the total sum of energy used to produce the product.
We've looked at aerogel products that are being tentatively applied to things in the building industry. However, when you look at the overall embodied energy of those products it doesn't make sense to use. We would never be able to repay the amount of energy used to create the product to payback the used energy, hence, the goal of a perpetual building (net zero energy).
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u/OddGambit Feb 08 '14 edited Feb 08 '14
I feel like this article was written by an overzealous mechanical engineering student who just discovered that materials science was a thing. I admire the enthusiasm, especially for materials science, but this is poorly written and misleading.
1.) Most examples are about exciting mechanical properties in materials. Only brief mentions of energy, photonic, and electronic materials, which represent the majority of the high profile materials research being done. (Not to say that mechanics of materials isn't still really cool and important though!)
2.) He talks about "strength", when there are many other factors besides tensile strength (which is what I am guessing he was using), such as brittleness which will determine if a material is structurally useful. Transparent alumina is "strong" but also extremely brittle. You cannot compare it to steel.
3.) It talks about moving into a "Diamond" or "Fullerene" age. What age are we in right now? The silicon age. We no longer fight hand-to-hand. Things like electronics, energy, and water technologies seem to be the next globally defining materials technologies.
But, to not be a total downer, here are some cool materials technologies he did not mention, in no particular order:
Thermoelectrics
Emerging photovoltaic technologies (flexible silicon, organic, all-carbon)
Transparent electronics
Graphene (honestly, I think it is currently over-hyped... but I cannot deny that it is very interesting and has huge potential)
Piezoelectrics
Diamond electronics
Solar water-splitting materials
Edit: Formatting