DailyDirt: More Miraculous Manmade Materials

from the urls-we-dug-up dept

There's no shortage of new man-made materials being developed, and they come in all different shapes, sizes and purposes. Sometimes it's about making something old in a new way, or giving something common an extremely uncommon property — or just producing something in previously unimaginable quantities. Here are some new developments from the world of synthetics.

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Filed Under: carbon dioxide, co2, concrete, greenhouse gas, material science, materials, spider silk, textiles, transparent wood
Companies: bolt threads


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2016 @ 7:02pm

    Spider silk is harder to just "brew" because the process of fiber spinning that a spider does is done at a scale that is just insanely impractical to do with any kind of tech we currently have. Good luck with that. Maybe they can get silkworms to spit out a form of spider silk.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2016 @ 7:38pm

      Re:

      I recommend you watch the Rice University video on producing Carbon Nanofiber threads and then go on to look into their partner Teijin Aramid:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0
      In the video you can see the fiber spinning cylinder used.
      Created spider silk is much closer to mass production than you thought.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2016 @ 8:20pm

    > transparent version could be an ideal material for solar cells, among other things.

    If it is transparent, it is not capturing energy from light (in the frequencies for which it is transparent). Maybe they're talking about heat-capture? That is, a direct replacement for glass/plastic coverings in existing solar cells?

    And from the linked article...
    >Berglund says transparent wood panels can also be used for windows, and semitransparent facades, when the idea is to let light in but maintain privacy.

    ... sort of like bamboo paper partitions, or greased paper windows... The article doesn't say how much more cost effective this transparent wood would be over using glass. For now, I'd say it's a novelty but I'm not yet sold on its utility.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      JoeCool (profile), 19 May 2016 @ 9:14pm

      Re:

      When they say transparent wood is ideal for solar panels, they mean as a cover. Glass is fragile and expensive, and unbreakable glass way more expensive. Transparent wood would not be fragile while still remaining cheap.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Richard (profile), 20 May 2016 @ 6:09am

    CO2NCRETE

    I can't think of a non-problematic way to pronounce it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      The Wanderer (profile), 22 May 2016 @ 5:30am

      Re: CO2NCRETE

      I think it's probably best pronounced as something like "see-oh-tune-crete", only with a bit more separation between the "tu" and the "n".

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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