Five wonder materials that could change the world

The Guardian ^ | April 15, 2014 | Ian Sample

[blueplum]

Materials such as graphene and shrilk are so new that the scientists who discovered them hardly know what to do with them – they only know they might yet transform our lives :snip:

Last week, Zhaohui Zhong at the University of Michigan described how graphene might be used to make night-vision contact lenses.

"Graphene has huge potential," says Andrea Ferrari, director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. "You don't usually find a material that has applications in so many different areas." :snip:

What to call a material made from leftover shrimp shells and proteins derived from silk? Javier Fernandez and Don Ingber at the Wyss Institute at Harvard plumped for shrilk, and the name has stuck. :snip:

Stanene was created – virtually, that is – by Shoucheng Zhang at Stanford University. Scientists call it a topological insulator, but the name isn't wildly helpful. Stanene is an insulator on the inside, and a conductor on the outside. Thin layers of stanene – or one-atom-thick sheets of tin – are essentially all surface, and should conduct electricity with 100% efficiency.

[blueplum]

interesting article that contains a brief description of metamaterial 'cloaking'.

[LegendHasIt]

I remember back in the early 1990s when Fullerenes (’Buckyballs’); Sorta similar to graphene, were going to revolutionize the world and advance technology by orders of magnitude.

[maddog55]

If science could find a way to implement “common sense” it alone would have a far greater affect on the world.

[blueplum]

Buckyballs turned out to be a whole ‘nuther can of worms:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/federal-regulators-suing-buckyballs-founder-in-rare-product-recall-case/2014/01/05/5b8c19ec-5087-11e3-a7f0-b790929232e1_story.html

[infowarrior]

Five wonder materials that could change the world

I seem to recall much ado about a 'wonder material' some time ago. Now, what was that material called again? Abbestos, or something like that?

the infowarrior

[Twinkie]

Yeah; that’s just it. Forging ahead without due consideration; it’s the liberal way - as is screaming bloody murder until restrictive laws are passed in order to do away with those “innovations”.

[dfwgator]

[ifinnegan]

Thanks for the post.

[backwoods-engineer]

Wrong Buckyballs. The article you referred to were about toys/hobby materials with extremely strong magnets in them. The real buckyballs, full name buckminsterfullerene, is 60 carbon atoms in a geodesic sphere, called that because of Fuller’s fascination with geodesic domes for houses.

[ro_dreaming]

He’s talking about these:

http://buckyball.smalley.rice.edu/

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/05/buckyball_rice_plaques.php

http://www.nanotech-now.com/nanotube-buckyball-sites.htm

[blueplum]

oh. LOL. and thanks for the reading list. I love learning things.