nanopolitan 2.0

Quote: Beginner’s Mind and Expert’s Mind

Abi — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:50:39 +0000

In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.
— Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Found here.

Liquid Metal? In A Watch?

Abi — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:22:13 +0000

Yes. In a watch. Not just any watch, but an Omega.

In any case, watch. I mean the video at that link, and you’ll love the slogan: “Sometimes, the most unlikely partnerships are the most enduring.” And I guess we could add, “the most expensive.”

Here’s the short description from that page on the bulk metallic glass that goes by its trade name “Liquidmetal®”:

Liquidmetal®: seamless bonding, remarkable hardness

The Liquidmetal® alloy is an amorphous metal – a metallic material with a disordered, non-crystalline atomic structure. Its fusion temperature is half that of conventional titanium alloys but when it is cooled, its hardness is three times as great as that of stainless steel. Its amorphous structure allows it to bond seamlessly with the ceramic bezel.

The Liquidmetal® is a bulk metallic glass alloy consisting of five elements: zirconium, titanium, copper, nickel and beryllium. A bulk metallic glass can, by virtue of its low critical cooling rate, be formed into a structure with a thickness of more than a tenth of a millimetre. Zirconium is an important constituent part both of the Liquidmetal® alloy and of the ceramic material which is made of zirconium dioxide (Zr02).

Thanks for the pointer to my friend and colleague Ram (Prof. U. Ramamurty), who is well known for his studies of mechanical behaviour of bulk metallic glasses.

* * *

BTW, this blog has had a chance to post about Liquidmetal® sometime ago.

Golden Trivia

Abi — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:42:24 +0000

From Who’s Got All The Gold, And Who’s Mining It:

All Gold Ever Mined – The total amount of gold ever mined is estimated to be worth around US$5 trillion.

How Gold is Used – You might have though (like me) that most of the gold in the world stored in bank vaults and lock-boxes? Actually, 78 % of the worlds’ gold is made into jewelery. Other industries, mostly electronics, medical, and dental, require about 12%. The remaining 10% of the yearly gold supply is used in financial transactions.

Materialia Indica

Abi — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:21:49 +0000

Just a quick note — after a dormant period of over 16 months! — to tell you that I have started blogging at Materialia Indica, an India-centric group blog by and for materials science folks — academics, researchers, post-docs, grad and undergrad students. See the About page for details. [Update (1 June 2009): Materialia Indica now has a new, more spacious and more feature-rich home at Ning, which offers a complete suite of networking and community-building features that we have always wanted (and our blog lacked). In particular, becoming a member and starting a discussion is far easier for all the members of a community in a social network than in a blog. Hence the move to Ning.

If you are interested in materials science/engineering education and research in India, Materialia Indica is the place to be. Come on in and join us. You don't need a special invitation from anyone; just click on the 'sign-up' link, fill in the details, and you are in!]

As of now, my co-bloggers are Guru (M.P. Gururajan, IIT-D) and Phani (G. Phanikumar, IIT-M).

We would like to expand our team. If you are interested — or, if you know someone who might be interested, let us know through the contact form on the Contributors page.

Now, this blog can go back to being silent …9

Links: Spidey suits, and tips on writing papers

Abi — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:38:53 +0000

Science Daily: Physicists have found a formula for a Spiderman suit.

Chemical & Engineering News: Tips for writing a journal article.

Links: Music of the dunes, grad school advice, value of education at an elite college

Abi — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:30:14 +0000

Philip Ball: Grainy tunes from sand dunes.

Drek: Advice for Grad Students [Via Brayden King].

Paul Graham: “It doesn’t matter much where a given individual goes to college.“

Some links …

Abi — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:27:37 +0000

Exon points us to this Science Roll post with a compilation of science-oriented video archives.

Philip Ball has a post recounting the history (and the key person) behind the development of goggles that filter out UV and IR radiation.

Guru points us to some of the classic papers from the previous centuries that Philosophical Magazine has published on its website along with some commentary.

This article in the Hindu is about a study on the saddle point configuration for nucleation of a bubble in superheated water. It claims that this study overturns a conventional view; I am yet to figure out how!

Liquid Metal

Abi — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:46:44 +0000

Check out this video that compares the elastic properties — in particular, the resilience or the amount of stored elastic energy — of three materials: an amorphous alloy, stainless steel and titanium. The video is from Liquidmetal Technologies, a California based company founded to commercialize the research on amorphous alloys (or metallic glasses) conducted at Caltech by Prof. William L. Johnson. Do check out the Liquidmetal website; there is a wealth of materials-oriented information (including applications of amorphous alloys) there.

iMechanica links

Abi — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:27:05 +0000

The iMechanica site is a treasure. The good folks there post not only their recent papers and preprints, but also stuff that’s of interest to a general audience as well. Let me just link to a bunch of these general purpose things that appeared there recently:

Advice to a young physicist by Walther Bothe.
12 steps to a winning research proposal by George A. Hazelrigg of the National Science Foundation.
Links to “10 Simple Rules” for writing papers and getting published, writing grants, reviewing, …

In addition, there are course notes on offer:

Mechanical properties of thin films by Bill Nix.
Nonlinear fracture mechanics by John W. Hutchinson.

Here are some links that should interest materials people:

Ranking of mechanics-related journals (as of 2004).
Most cited papers in solid and computational mechanics.

And finally, here are some tips for finding information on iMechanica:

How to find what you want in iMechanica!

MIT’s progress in making synthetic spider silk

Abi — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:20:05 +0000

From this report [via slashdot]:

“If you look closely at the structure of spider silk, it is filled with a lot of very small crystals,” said Gareth McKinley, a professor of mechanical engineering and part of the group that devised the new method of producing the material.

“It’s highly reinforced.”

The secret of spider silk’s combined strength and flexibility, according to scientists, has to do with the arrangement of the nano-crystalline reinforcement of the silk as it is being produced—in other words, the way these tiny crystals are oriented towards (and adhere to) the stretchy protein.

Emulating this process in a synthetic polymer, the MIT team focused on reinforcing solutions of commercial rubbery substance known as polyurethane elastomer with nano-sized clay platelets instead of simply heating the mixing the molten plastics with reinforcing agents.