DailyDirt: Like Water Off A Duck's Back...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Surfaces that repel water are pretty fascinating to watch in action, especially on clothes when possible stains are magically avoided. There are plenty of other uses for hydrophobic materials that are cool, and some newer materials are omniphobic -- even superomniphobic. Here are just a few examples of these products that may be protecting all of our gadgets someday. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
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Filed Under: coatings, hydrophobic, materials, neverwet, omniphobic


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  1. identicon
    Androgynous Cowherd, 29 Jan 2013 @ 7:21pm

    Whoa.

    The bottommost item leads to this scary malware-site alert:

    The link you requested has been identified by bitly as being potentially problematic. This could be because a bitly user has reported a problem ...

    The link you requested may contain inappropriate content, or even spam or malicious code that could be downloaded to your computer without your consent, or may be a forgery or imitation of another website, designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information.


    Oddly, it looks like it's supposed to go to phys.org, a site that's generally regarded as reputable (except by the rather overly-conservative Peerguardian, which seems to think it's hostile to P2P but which is also known for producing frequent false positives).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Jan 2013 @ 7:26pm

    Educated bees?

    Fleas? I think someone has misheard those lyrics.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    weneedhelp - not signed in, 29 Jan 2013 @ 7:52pm

    Re: Whoa.

    Dont know why a link shorten-er was used but I clicked through for the hell of it.

    http://phys.org/news/2013-01-material-liquids-wont.html

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Jan 2013 @ 7:58pm

    Re: Whoa.

    The link makes by browser choke for over 15 minutes before I killed it.

    Possibly caused by some Ads or what. Beware.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Isaac Kotlicky (profile), 30 Jan 2013 @ 5:48am

    hmmmn...

    Am I the only one who thinks it's cool than something omniPHOBIC of water an oil is being used to obviate the need to use something omniPHILLIC of water and oil (soap)?

    Metamaterial engineering is AWESOME.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    dennis deems (profile), 30 Jan 2013 @ 6:51am

    Re: Educated bees?

    Birds do it
    Bees do it
    Even educated fleas do it
    Let's do it
    Let's fall in love

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    dennis deems (profile), 30 Jan 2013 @ 7:00am

    Re: Re: Whoa.

    Dont know why a link shorten-er was used
    This. It's not 1997 anymore.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Jan 2013 @ 4:10pm

    Re: Re: Educated bees?

    TANK GIRL!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    btr1701 (profile), 1 Feb 2013 @ 2:41pm

    I think that iPhone is still probably toast. Sure, you coat it with that substance and it repels water, but in order for it to keep working, you'd also have to gunk up the charging port, the phone jack, etc. with the water-repellant, which would in itself render the phone rather useless.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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