Three Times Stronger Than Steel
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Also found this link here, which already has translations from the German website.
Posted on 05/01/2002 5:38:11 PM PDT by FatherTorque
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But is it brittle and will it shatter under a blow?
Correction: corundum. Sapphire and ruby are both corundum, and corundum was first synthesized well over 100 years ago from aluminum oxide in a flame fusion process. I wish this story was available in English so I could figure out what's different about this new stuff.
Linda Carter BTTT
...even if she is married to a RAT.
Transparent Aluminium doesn't exist.
Good News: This indicates many polite, educated people are actually reading the site, as none of the mail called me an idiot and about 80% of it was thoroughly educational.
Point of contention: The article states the substance in question is alumina, which I presumed was simply a German spelling of aluminum (despite being closer to a latin-based spelling)...partially spurred on by the caption to the picture in the original article actually saying "transparent aluminum." My science background not being in chemistry, I completely missed that alumina is shorthand for aluminium oxide... a ceramic, which is why it makes more sense for a company specializing in ceramics to have developed a transparent version of it.
Now, this doesn't make it any less impressive, because they've apparently managed to not only make it transparent, but seriously overcome the hardness (which usually also means brittleness) factor of alumina, if the firing tests are to be assumed to have been the German Federal Armed Forces shooting at them (especially if the US military has expressed an intrest in using it for visors or tank windows), rather than kiln firing tests performed by German Federal Dishwasher Assoc.
One other basic distinction in the field that my love of synonyms burned me on:
Hardness does not equal toughness. Metal is tough, as it will give before it breaks. Hardness, on the other hand, is resistance to deformation. A chicken bone is hard (and brittle). Soak that bone in vinegar, and the hardness goes down, the toughness goes up...it bends.
It was also pointed out that true transparent aluminum...a metal, would be isotropic (strong in every direction, allowing it to bend), whereas this would be anisotropic (only strong in certain directions...in this case, presumably able to react well to bullets, but a toric twist could shatter it).
Lastly, a few readers pointed out that your average dinnerware is fired to 1305 C, so the 1200 C used to fire this material isn't the trick to it, it's gotta be the "in such a way" bit mentioned in the article that is the secret...maybe it's an ancient chinese secret.
Oh, and I was also corrected on the pronunciation of aluminum...it's 'al-you-min-ee-um'. My ironic sense of humour is taking great pride in having been corrected in the pronunciation of something I wrote. ; )
Did a search for transparent, for aluminum, and for alumina, came up with zilch. You know how to find it, you're better than me.
That adds a syllable that clearly isn't present-- the 'ee' part, fifth syllable.
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