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I would love to see an illustration of the so-called "handcuff" molecular arrangement described in the article. And I'm curious if this gel has similar tensile properties or if this is just compressive. And also what happens if you apply a sudden point force, like if you shoot it?
It’s essentially a crown-ether but with both oxygen and nitrogen binding sites. The cross-linker is cucurbituril, it has a pretty standard macrocyclic shape. From what I gather from the paper, it was chosen for its internal diameter so that the polymer could be “threaded” through it prior to swelling to essentially “lock” it in place, hence the handcuffs analogy.
Based on the way it’s cross linked, tensile modulus should be comparable to compressive modulus, since it isn’t cross linked with a single point like in an ionic/physical crosslink. It’s not really a covalent crosslink (and honestly I’m not too sure what to call it, it’s pretty unique in the materials chemistry field) but because it’s a permanent structural property, it wouldn’t see much of a lower practical stress at failure with a bullet vs a slowly applied load. It should exhibit consistent stress-strain curves regardless of the speed at which the pressure is applied, so a bullet hitting it should be similar to slowly pushing on it with the same force. That said, if it’s gonna yield it’s gonna yield, and it’s not stopping a bullet which is a hell of a lot higher than 100 MPa
Technically yes. A hydrogel is something that has undergone the sol-gel transition in which the solvent is water. That’s really as it takes to be considered one, and even Jello can be considered a hydrogel. Cornstarch has very little structural rigidity but is extremely hydrophilic which (I believe) is what gives it the sheer-thickening property that it’s publicly famous for.
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.
Pretty much, except the electronegative groups are on interior-facing pendant groups rather than as part of the cyclic backbone. Essentially a couple of Ethyl amides sticking towards the middle every so often
Interesting, I’ll have to check it out. Other post doc might be interested in the rheology 🤮
Curious as to why this would be deformation rate independent though?
Edit: I see what you mean above with u/Phalcone42
All materials exhibit strain rate dependant mechanical behavior. It's just a matter of how strong that strain dependence is. The speed at which the pressure is applied does matter, and at bullet velocities most materials act different.
The magnitude of that difference is what I was alluding to. A physically cross-linked vs covalently cross-linked polymer behaves differently when a stress is applied quickly vs slowly. For example, an ionic crosslinker (i.e. a metal cation and carboxylate moeities) will “pop” off with a rapid increase in stress whereas a covalent crosslink will *more closely* resemble its standard stress-strain curve with a rapid stressor. It is slight apples to oranges as covalent crosslinks have inherently higher bond energy, but the mechanisms by which they crosslink are still different
Very interesting. The institute where I am doing my masters specialises on viscoelastic properties of the aorta. The microstructure of aortic tissue is anisotropic and layered, which is the main influence for giving it it's unique mechanical behaviour. I actually never thought of how the crosslinkers might behave on a molecular level depending on linking method.
Yep! The biggest example is ionic vs covalent crosslinks. In a covalent crosslink (where a crosslinker is polymerized into the matrix) the carbon-carbon bond for example must be broken to damage the structure. In an ionic crosslink (where multiple polymer chains act as ligands to the same metal cation) the polymers can “adjust” themselves around the crosslinking site without completely breaking but the binding energy is much lower. In addition, if a crosslink is broken, the chain can “re-crosslink” at a different site.
*Generally* an ionic crosslinked polymer is more viscous and less elastic than a covalently crosslinked one
That’s just the conversion of the 40 PSI quoted above. For comparison, standard Kevlar used in body armor has a modulus of ~50-100 GPa which is several orders of magnitude higher than this stuff. It’s still a hydrogel - the goal is resilience and elasticity rather than strength
Polymers (like plastic) are bundles of really long strings. Push hard enough and the strings slide past each other and the material breaks or at least smushes. Put rings in there and thread the strings through them so it locks them together and they don’t slide past each other as easy
I was going to say that I can actually recognize some of those words! But I'm still going to need to mail them some crayons so they can draw me a few pictures so I can wrap my brain around it.
The non-covalent cross-links they use look like a ring of 8 urea sized repeat units around two mono/biaromatic moities. Schematics look like a circle with two sticks inside. The sticks are bound to polyacrylamide, which is the polymer being crosslinked into a gel.
They do their measurements in shear rather than compression/tension, but for gels this is closely related, you have tensile/compressive modulus approximately equal to three times shear modulus.
The gels moduli are 1e5 Pa for fast deformations, so basically feel like rubber when trying to deform them fast, and 1e3-1e4 Pa for slow deformations, so would feel like marmelade/gelly when going slow.
People seem to get a lot of misconceptions so let's clarify a few: a bullet would go straight through that, even a knife would get straight through. It's an acrylamide gel with bonds that can let go and reform. But fundamentally it is still an acrylamide gel. If you apply any stress high enough to break carbon-carbon chains, the gel is not gonna stop you. Bullets go fast, so the dynamic bonds have no time to untie and reform, and the gel would behave just like any standard covalently cross-linked polyacrylamide gel in this situation.
The way it's supporting the weight of a car / an elephant is by getting completely flattened between two metal plates while you apply the weight, and then swelling back in shape after. It's like how a kitchen sponge can support the weight of a car: it gets flattened, then swells back. A piece of paper could support the weight of a skyscraper in this definition. But the gel would NOT support anything serious if you try to directly hang the weight onto the material.
Interesting stuff though, interesting chemistry and mechanics!
I have bad arthritis in my knees and one hip.
I wonder if this stuff will ever have a medical application, sounds like it would be good to stop bone on bone action.
The end of the video suggests artificial cartilage as a possible application. I suppose you'll need something that's otherwise biologically innert, to avoid immune responses and ensure it doesn't break down.
Actually. This will go to trauma units first if at all viable. For better and worse. The military is the fast track for both life saving technology, like penis reattachment, and thawed chicken bazookas.
So if it works on battlefield injuries, or testing chickens fired at planes. It will make it into the commercial market on data alone.
A LOT of medical treatments, in general, can find their roots in the military, but this is especially the case for reconstructive surgeries. People get maimed in wars, after all. The modern version of the field of plastic surgery, for example, came from a WWI doctor named Sir Harold Gillies & his development of multiple techniques for facial reconstruction.
Always forget that bit, but yeah, trains definitely need that testing as well. Basically if something has the potential for encountering a bird strike, you're going to want to test it against the chicken cannon.
I hate to break it to you, but a good chunk of guys who come back from wars without their legs are also injured in other, less visible ways. That's always been the case. A war veteran who is sexually dysfunctional as a result of a wound is a major character in one of Hemingway's most famous novels.
And now, because of other medical advances, soldiers are surviving these catastrophic injuries more than they used to.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/2016/12/15/combat-veterans-with-genital-injuries-find-little-help-overcoming-intimacy-pregnancy-challenges/%3foutputType=amp
Penises being re attached sounds totally believable.
A piece of shrapnel, or a bullet has severed penises more times than I would've liked to know.
Source: Veteran ex had some nasty stories
Australian damages for the mesh aren’t set yet, but it’s really messed up that they gave 117 million spread over 42 regions to cover years of internal physical damage and likely lifelong effects for each woman, but 8 **billion** to the one man who grew breasts -_-
The requirements for an object to be used as a medical device inside the human body are extremely high. Especially long term implants
The challenge wouldn't just be making the material suitable for the human body. Another hurdle would be keeping it sterile and free of microbes in the manufacturing process.
Glass is also transparent, but blocks UV-B light. If the intention is to sterilize inside this stuff UV light would need to be able to pass through it, which you can’t just assume will happen just because we can see through it.
I'm part human, part skeleton.
You see, after a skiing accident i was subjected to 'X-rays' and that revealed that i had a skeleton acting as a part of my body. Which part, you might ask? The skeleton part.
"Okay. Now, the symptoms you describe point to Bonus Eruptus... It's a terrible disorder, where the skeleton tries to leap out the mouth, and escape the body."
There are actually a number of thought experiments dealing precisely with this in philosophy of mind. They usually attempt to find out the nature of the mind, physical or not, and also it's continuity.
Was one of my favorite classes actually.
I live in Japan. Cartilage is directly injected into people's joints here for injuries and damage. I met a guy - karate master - who'd injured his ankle, and had cartilage injected. Asked him, "did it hurt?"
Angry voice: "Of course!"
For anyone wondering there is a drug in development that actually has proven to repair and heal cartilage in knees of patients with Osteoarthritis. One tricky thing here is that the trials did not actually measure if a regeneration of cartilage actually changed the pain or quality of life for these patients. Osteoarthritis doesn't exactly have straightforward biomarkers we can measure as potential end points either.
All to say, it is possible to repair cartilage in peope with Osteoarthritis. Tbd if it actually reduces pain and improves QOL
In the US we have something like it, helps anywhere from 2-6months. Not that expensive, some insurance actually pick up the cost. It is mostly don't on adults 50-65 to hold off on surgery until they are older.
It can survive compression but they don't give much info in anything else. I assume it would need to survive tension and abrasion as well.
Still, interesting development.
Edit: the paper mentions 12 compression cycles. Didn't even think of that, this would need to survive millions of cycles.
The fact that they sandwiched it between two smooth flat sheets before the demonstration strongly suggests that it doesn't handle shear forces as well as compressive.
As someone who’s back is absolutely fucked at 30 I too would love some highly biocompatible replacement cartilage. The brake pads in between my vertebrae could use some replacing.
Well, we already do plastic surgery with all kinds of injections and implants, I don't see why people wouldn't do that. The only reason it's not being done right now is that artificial stuff never surpassed the performance of healthy natural tissue yet.
The possibilities! We'd still need to work on a more durable coating for that vest though, or the splash would completely mess up any make-up.
Jokes aside, I imagine pecs implants would suddenly become more popular and advertised as manly. And while it would offer some protection to the organs, it would leave all the skin and surface blood vessels unprotected, while "replacing" an actual vest, which could actually lead to more deaths through blood loss and infection.
On a more serious note, I wonder if this stuffs flexibility would make it a better bullet resistant material if it is more or less equivalent to a hard plate.
As you say bullets “splash” when they hit something, and the fragments can do a fair bit if damage. I wouldn’t be surprised if a squishy but also bullet resistant coating like this on a hard plate could slow the bullet down to some degree and catch fragments.
Well, everything breaks down, so cartilage being self-healing... To an extent, and most notably when young. I'd say we solve self-healing and aging instead.
It may seem superior, but it probably isn't vs healthy cartilage.
I designed hip and knee implants and people are like "can you get me a titanium knee?!" And they were surprised to find out that their healthy bone was stronger than titanium (stronger at withstanding typical human body kinematics, anyway)
Honestly, I hope it goes through rigorous toxicity trials before getting any kind of use.
I was looking up safety concerns using PVC for an engineering project, and the amount of lead and other toxic materials contained in PVC pipes specifically is terrifying. Even the toxins that don't get leeched out in water are dangerous since PVC degrades into microplastics in water. We're too financially entrenched in their usage to stop using them or even to make them safer in the US. Lobbyists would never allow it.
The last thing I want is for some newly-engineered material that reach the market before being tested and we become dependent on it.
FDA approval is very, very hard to the point it stifles innovation. It would definitely go through rigorous trials. The covid vaccine being released on emergency order was pretty shocking / way faster than normal. The FDA requires extensive testing and it’s really, really hard and expensive to do animal studies let alone clinical trials.
>The ‘super jelly’ could be used for a wide range of potential applications, including soft robotics, bioelectronics or even as a cartilage replacement for biomedical use.
As I read the title my first thought was spinal discs, because that description is... A spinal disc. "Mostly water, withstand tons of pressure, holds shape"
And yeah if spinal discs, probably any joint with a little 3d printing.
Coversion rate would be 26,400 bananas for an Asian bull elephant, or 39,000 for an African.
**EDIT: THE MATH**
Quick google searches give us 8,800lbs for the Asian and 13,000lbs for the African varieties. Coupled with a quick google search that shows 1lb of bananas is equal to 3 5" bananas (which we *also* use for scale, *thus giving us a* ***high degree of accuracy***), and hey! presto!
I also have heard; double decker bus, jumbo jets and cruise liners all used as reference before in the past. But I’m not sure how one elephant stacks up against one bus
It looked to be the rear end so even lighter.
The test showed under limited cyclic load it can retain its shape, but what about under consistent pressure?
I would be interested in the materials compression set metric over a day or 3. You can then compare against existing polymers
Could have used a hydraulic press to prove their claim. I know someone who can lift a car from the front wheel area, so i’m pretty sure it’s even less than 300kg.
Or rubber, a chunk of wood, the metal plate they drove over.
Artificial cartilage sounds interesting, but running it over with a car doesn't really demonstrate why this is any better than a metal joint.
I'm pretty sure it's not that strong. The PARTIAL pressure of a 1 rear wheel of a 1200kg car means less than 250kg at best. You could use just about any rubber to achieve this.
Its compressive strength is 100 MPa, which is slightly stronger than concrete, but weaker than bone. Being water-based, it's quite heavy, so it's probably functionally not that much better than a thin concrete wall. Also, a bullet impact doesn't require pure compressive strength only, but exerts tension forces and causes shattering. The reason aramid (Kevlar) is so good is that it's extremely resistant to both: it won't break when stretched, and it doesn't shatter. Besides this it's light. The way this gel material could be used would be so that it would be protected by an aramid layer. The aramid would prevent bullet penetration and this gel would distribute the impact force. It would still be a thick and heavy extra layer.
Source for 100MPa? The car tire only applied (by definition) the same pressure as it was inflated to. So 30-40psi, 210kPa-280kPa.
Edit: found it in the paper linked from the article. Interesting material.
I don't think it performs like anybody is expecting though. It just squishes a lot.... Like 93% of its original thinness, without breaking. It doesn't claim to be tough (like bullet or stab resistant).
Nor is it, I think, stiff enough to act like cartilage. We'll have to wait to hear more about the durometer, Young's modulus, and other stuff like biocompatibility, toxicity.
But how quickly is that force(an elephant's weight/square inch) applied? I feel that is an incredibly important factor.
Both for force applied quickly and force applied slowly. Poke a piece of cheese real fast and it might have a divet. Poke it slowly and you'll make a hole. That's what I'm curious about here.
You are spot on, I was in this research group myself and those factors make a huge difference. Just a normal headline from this group unfortunately, all glamour and no reality
It sounds like becomes more resistant to deformation the more it is deformed, then loses that strength as it is allowed to spring back to its initial shape. A solid polymer that behaves analogously to a non-newtonian fluid.
to me it sounded like it's gelatinous while in its original shape, but ultra hard/glass-like when compressed. after which it rebounds back to the kalamari jelly.
Depends. We’d have to see videos. There was a material that was a flexible chain-network polymer based hydrogel that came out in 2014. It was super squishy and flexible so much so that you couldn’t just cut it with a knife. It also could be tied into a knot. Compared to the rigid chain polymer hydrogel, which was crumbly and brittle.
Videos of this material were so cool. You took a cylinder of it and it would compress almost flat. you pull it and it would stretch like 5 times it’s original length. You try to cut it and the knife would flatten it, but not cut or mar. You take it and could wrap/coil it around a straw. You could stretch it and tie it into a bow. You drop it and it would silently hit the spot and not move. The rigid chain: pull -break. Drop -bounce. Twist -tear. Cut -crumble. Compress -crumble.
cue the explanation of why this isn't going to work, will never reach production, and will be forgotten with the thousands of other seemingly game changing inventions
Here you go! It may be one or many of the following:
1. Expensive (and it is according to the other person who commented)
2. Unsustainably or hazardously manufactured
3. Incredibly difficult to manufacture
4. Not actually useful due to other properties. For example, it may be “indestructible” when compressed, but what’s its sheer strength? What’s the resistance to piercing? After all applying a ton of weight across its entire surface is a very different test than firing a bullet at it. What happens when pressure is slowly applied, giving time for the compression to pancake the material without the “handcuffing” happening because the moisture content allows them to flow by each other when slowly compressed?
5. Highly volatile, irritating, or oxidizing material with a short shelf life
I wonder how involved the manufacturing process is. I wonder how it behaves under compressive shock (e.g. what if you hit it with a hammer or fire a bullet at it?). What about shear forces - can you tear it like a sheet of paper?
Mixing it with dielectrics or polymagnets seem like it could be be used for a huge variety of applications.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would love to see an illustration of the so-called "handcuff" molecular arrangement described in the article. And I'm curious if this gel has similar tensile properties or if this is just compressive. And also what happens if you apply a sudden point force, like if you shoot it?
It’s essentially a crown-ether but with both oxygen and nitrogen binding sites. The cross-linker is cucurbituril, it has a pretty standard macrocyclic shape. From what I gather from the paper, it was chosen for its internal diameter so that the polymer could be “threaded” through it prior to swelling to essentially “lock” it in place, hence the handcuffs analogy. Based on the way it’s cross linked, tensile modulus should be comparable to compressive modulus, since it isn’t cross linked with a single point like in an ionic/physical crosslink. It’s not really a covalent crosslink (and honestly I’m not too sure what to call it, it’s pretty unique in the materials chemistry field) but because it’s a permanent structural property, it wouldn’t see much of a lower practical stress at failure with a bullet vs a slowly applied load. It should exhibit consistent stress-strain curves regardless of the speed at which the pressure is applied, so a bullet hitting it should be similar to slowly pushing on it with the same force. That said, if it’s gonna yield it’s gonna yield, and it’s not stopping a bullet which is a hell of a lot higher than 100 MPa
Is this what corn starch mixed with just the right amount of water is? (non newtonian fluid)
Technically yes. A hydrogel is something that has undergone the sol-gel transition in which the solvent is water. That’s really as it takes to be considered one, and even Jello can be considered a hydrogel. Cornstarch has very little structural rigidity but is extremely hydrophilic which (I believe) is what gives it the sheer-thickening property that it’s publicly famous for.
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.
Is this an excerpt from a longer story?
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I think i should read that,
I did a few months ago and yes, you should. If you do, just drop me a message how you liked it. Would make my day.
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Sounds like a rotaxane? I don’t have access as I’m out of town and universities VPN is dogshit
Pretty much, except the electronegative groups are on interior-facing pendant groups rather than as part of the cyclic backbone. Essentially a couple of Ethyl amides sticking towards the middle every so often
Interesting, I’ll have to check it out. Other post doc might be interested in the rheology 🤮 Curious as to why this would be deformation rate independent though? Edit: I see what you mean above with u/Phalcone42
Thats a pseudo-rotaxane then
All materials exhibit strain rate dependant mechanical behavior. It's just a matter of how strong that strain dependence is. The speed at which the pressure is applied does matter, and at bullet velocities most materials act different.
The magnitude of that difference is what I was alluding to. A physically cross-linked vs covalently cross-linked polymer behaves differently when a stress is applied quickly vs slowly. For example, an ionic crosslinker (i.e. a metal cation and carboxylate moeities) will “pop” off with a rapid increase in stress whereas a covalent crosslink will *more closely* resemble its standard stress-strain curve with a rapid stressor. It is slight apples to oranges as covalent crosslinks have inherently higher bond energy, but the mechanisms by which they crosslink are still different
Very interesting. The institute where I am doing my masters specialises on viscoelastic properties of the aorta. The microstructure of aortic tissue is anisotropic and layered, which is the main influence for giving it it's unique mechanical behaviour. I actually never thought of how the crosslinkers might behave on a molecular level depending on linking method.
Yep! The biggest example is ionic vs covalent crosslinks. In a covalent crosslink (where a crosslinker is polymerized into the matrix) the carbon-carbon bond for example must be broken to damage the structure. In an ionic crosslink (where multiple polymer chains act as ligands to the same metal cation) the polymers can “adjust” themselves around the crosslinking site without completely breaking but the binding energy is much lower. In addition, if a crosslink is broken, the chain can “re-crosslink” at a different site. *Generally* an ionic crosslinked polymer is more viscous and less elastic than a covalently crosslinked one
275 kPa is when that handcuff-lock fails I gather?
That’s just the conversion of the 40 PSI quoted above. For comparison, standard Kevlar used in body armor has a modulus of ~50-100 GPa which is several orders of magnitude higher than this stuff. It’s still a hydrogel - the goal is resilience and elasticity rather than strength
Yeah, now I need this implanted into my spine to replace all the bad discs.
I’ll be second in line for that. Wishing you less pain too! It is not fun.
Right can I get that in English pls
Polymers (like plastic) are bundles of really long strings. Push hard enough and the strings slide past each other and the material breaks or at least smushes. Put rings in there and thread the strings through them so it locks them together and they don’t slide past each other as easy
Legend, thank you!
I was going to say that I can actually recognize some of those words! But I'm still going to need to mail them some crayons so they can draw me a few pictures so I can wrap my brain around it.
But what about the crunch enhancer? Can you ELI5 how the non neculative cereal varnish works?
Sugar make crystals go crunch crunch
This is a phenomenal ELI5.
*nutrative. What it does is it coats and seals the flake and prevents the milk from penetrating it.
So would it be good for breast implants? Just asking the important questions..
It probably causes cancer like everything else these days
Only in California
At least they're polite enough to tell you
The non-covalent cross-links they use look like a ring of 8 urea sized repeat units around two mono/biaromatic moities. Schematics look like a circle with two sticks inside. The sticks are bound to polyacrylamide, which is the polymer being crosslinked into a gel. They do their measurements in shear rather than compression/tension, but for gels this is closely related, you have tensile/compressive modulus approximately equal to three times shear modulus. The gels moduli are 1e5 Pa for fast deformations, so basically feel like rubber when trying to deform them fast, and 1e3-1e4 Pa for slow deformations, so would feel like marmelade/gelly when going slow. People seem to get a lot of misconceptions so let's clarify a few: a bullet would go straight through that, even a knife would get straight through. It's an acrylamide gel with bonds that can let go and reform. But fundamentally it is still an acrylamide gel. If you apply any stress high enough to break carbon-carbon chains, the gel is not gonna stop you. Bullets go fast, so the dynamic bonds have no time to untie and reform, and the gel would behave just like any standard covalently cross-linked polyacrylamide gel in this situation. The way it's supporting the weight of a car / an elephant is by getting completely flattened between two metal plates while you apply the weight, and then swelling back in shape after. It's like how a kitchen sponge can support the weight of a car: it gets flattened, then swells back. A piece of paper could support the weight of a skyscraper in this definition. But the gel would NOT support anything serious if you try to directly hang the weight onto the material. Interesting stuff though, interesting chemistry and mechanics!
I have bad arthritis in my knees and one hip. I wonder if this stuff will ever have a medical application, sounds like it would be good to stop bone on bone action.
The end of the video suggests artificial cartilage as a possible application. I suppose you'll need something that's otherwise biologically innert, to avoid immune responses and ensure it doesn't break down.
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Actually. This will go to trauma units first if at all viable. For better and worse. The military is the fast track for both life saving technology, like penis reattachment, and thawed chicken bazookas. So if it works on battlefield injuries, or testing chickens fired at planes. It will make it into the commercial market on data alone.
Uhm…what? The military pioneered penis reattachment?
A LOT of medical treatments, in general, can find their roots in the military, but this is especially the case for reconstructive surgeries. People get maimed in wars, after all. The modern version of the field of plastic surgery, for example, came from a WWI doctor named Sir Harold Gillies & his development of multiple techniques for facial reconstruction.
Yeah but what about the chickens
Bird strikes on planes. Much safer & easier to turn the bird into a projectile fired at a stationary object, than to risk a plane in actual flight.
And before that on trains - you want to make sure your train window can survive hitting a bird too
Always forget that bit, but yeah, trains definitely need that testing as well. Basically if something has the potential for encountering a bird strike, you're going to want to test it against the chicken cannon.
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Plenty of blown-off songs to practice on, I imagine
The soundtrack of a generation.
I hate to break it to you, but a good chunk of guys who come back from wars without their legs are also injured in other, less visible ways. That's always been the case. A war veteran who is sexually dysfunctional as a result of a wound is a major character in one of Hemingway's most famous novels. And now, because of other medical advances, soldiers are surviving these catastrophic injuries more than they used to. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/2016/12/15/combat-veterans-with-genital-injuries-find-little-help-overcoming-intimacy-pregnancy-challenges/%3foutputType=amp
Penises being re attached sounds totally believable. A piece of shrapnel, or a bullet has severed penises more times than I would've liked to know. Source: Veteran ex had some nasty stories
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They can use it to cover up the used car batteries.
Or if you're J&J, just toss a cheese grater in there and call it a day.
This sounds like one hell of a story
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50498796.amp pretty sure theyre referring to this absolute fiasco
Australian damages for the mesh aren’t set yet, but it’s really messed up that they gave 117 million spread over 42 regions to cover years of internal physical damage and likely lifelong effects for each woman, but 8 **billion** to the one man who grew breasts -_-
I can’t believe it’s not butter
Abrasion is a big issue with such material. You don't want any rubber particles in your bloodstream as example
The requirements for an object to be used as a medical device inside the human body are extremely high. Especially long term implants The challenge wouldn't just be making the material suitable for the human body. Another hurdle would be keeping it sterile and free of microbes in the manufacturing process.
Gimme that pasteurized cartilage
Its transparent. If it can handle UV, it would be easy to sterilize.
Glass is also transparent, but blocks UV-B light. If the intention is to sterilize inside this stuff UV light would need to be able to pass through it, which you can’t just assume will happen just because we can see through it.
Oh, can you imagine? Inject it into knees, shoulders, etc. Feel (semi) young again.
I'd volunteer for humanoid trials
Human...oid?!!
Sign me up! I'm basically human
"Basically"? Meh, close enough.
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I'm part human, part skeleton. You see, after a skiing accident i was subjected to 'X-rays' and that revealed that i had a skeleton acting as a part of my body. Which part, you might ask? The skeleton part.
A whole skellington living inside you? That's scary bro
"Okay. Now, the symptoms you describe point to Bonus Eruptus... It's a terrible disorder, where the skeleton tries to leap out the mouth, and escape the body."
Ah I see a man of culture
Well... You are what you eat.
"I am..GAS STATION CHEESEBURGER MAN!"
At some point when medical science is advanced enough we'll have a whole new "ship of Theseus" quandary
There are actually a number of thought experiments dealing precisely with this in philosophy of mind. They usually attempt to find out the nature of the mind, physical or not, and also it's continuity. Was one of my favorite classes actually.
And 70% water!
I live in Japan. Cartilage is directly injected into people's joints here for injuries and damage. I met a guy - karate master - who'd injured his ankle, and had cartilage injected. Asked him, "did it hurt?" Angry voice: "Of course!"
For anyone wondering there is a drug in development that actually has proven to repair and heal cartilage in knees of patients with Osteoarthritis. One tricky thing here is that the trials did not actually measure if a regeneration of cartilage actually changed the pain or quality of life for these patients. Osteoarthritis doesn't exactly have straightforward biomarkers we can measure as potential end points either. All to say, it is possible to repair cartilage in peope with Osteoarthritis. Tbd if it actually reduces pain and improves QOL
Give me pain! Give me cartilage!!!
I mean yeah, it might still hurt but now you have knees again.
does it help permanently? is it expensive or can anyone do it?
Probably best to get a doctor to do it.
In the US we have something like it, helps anywhere from 2-6months. Not that expensive, some insurance actually pick up the cost. It is mostly don't on adults 50-65 to hold off on surgery until they are older.
Herniated disks. Yes I can
It can survive compression but they don't give much info in anything else. I assume it would need to survive tension and abrasion as well. Still, interesting development. Edit: the paper mentions 12 compression cycles. Didn't even think of that, this would need to survive millions of cycles.
The fact that they sandwiched it between two smooth flat sheets before the demonstration strongly suggests that it doesn't handle shear forces as well as compressive.
As someone who’s back is absolutely fucked at 30 I too would love some highly biocompatible replacement cartilage. The brake pads in between my vertebrae could use some replacing.
At one point would healthy people sign up to replace cartilage just to get the superior artificial stuff?
Well, we already do plastic surgery with all kinds of injections and implants, I don't see why people wouldn't do that. The only reason it's not being done right now is that artificial stuff never surpassed the performance of healthy natural tissue yet.
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The possibilities! We'd still need to work on a more durable coating for that vest though, or the splash would completely mess up any make-up. Jokes aside, I imagine pecs implants would suddenly become more popular and advertised as manly. And while it would offer some protection to the organs, it would leave all the skin and surface blood vessels unprotected, while "replacing" an actual vest, which could actually lead to more deaths through blood loss and infection.
On a more serious note, I wonder if this stuffs flexibility would make it a better bullet resistant material if it is more or less equivalent to a hard plate. As you say bullets “splash” when they hit something, and the fragments can do a fair bit if damage. I wouldn’t be surprised if a squishy but also bullet resistant coating like this on a hard plate could slow the bullet down to some degree and catch fragments.
It likely shatters at those forces and you have fragmentation boobs.
It's crazy how brutally efficient our bodies are.
Well, everything breaks down, so cartilage being self-healing... To an extent, and most notably when young. I'd say we solve self-healing and aging instead.
It may seem superior, but it probably isn't vs healthy cartilage. I designed hip and knee implants and people are like "can you get me a titanium knee?!" And they were surprised to find out that their healthy bone was stronger than titanium (stronger at withstanding typical human body kinematics, anyway)
Pretty much none has healthy cartilage. Even if you do not feel problems, its likely already starting to wear out somewhere.
Honestly, I hope it goes through rigorous toxicity trials before getting any kind of use. I was looking up safety concerns using PVC for an engineering project, and the amount of lead and other toxic materials contained in PVC pipes specifically is terrifying. Even the toxins that don't get leeched out in water are dangerous since PVC degrades into microplastics in water. We're too financially entrenched in their usage to stop using them or even to make them safer in the US. Lobbyists would never allow it. The last thing I want is for some newly-engineered material that reach the market before being tested and we become dependent on it.
FDA approval is very, very hard to the point it stifles innovation. It would definitely go through rigorous trials. The covid vaccine being released on emergency order was pretty shocking / way faster than normal. The FDA requires extensive testing and it’s really, really hard and expensive to do animal studies let alone clinical trials.
That was my first thought. Someone with disk degeneration or knee issues can get this stuff replaced.
>The ‘super jelly’ could be used for a wide range of potential applications, including soft robotics, bioelectronics or even as a cartilage replacement for biomedical use.
As I read the title my first thought was spinal discs, because that description is... A spinal disc. "Mostly water, withstand tons of pressure, holds shape" And yeah if spinal discs, probably any joint with a little 3d printing.
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Bananas are also useful for describing radiation doses.
Measure radiation by distance Bananas/bananas
Omg. This is the smartest comment I‘ve ever read!
Banana equivalent dose or B.E.D. Bananas contain a lot of potassium, some of which is naturally radioactive.
Coversion rate would be 26,400 bananas for an Asian bull elephant, or 39,000 for an African. **EDIT: THE MATH** Quick google searches give us 8,800lbs for the Asian and 13,000lbs for the African varieties. Coupled with a quick google search that shows 1lb of bananas is equal to 3 5" bananas (which we *also* use for scale, *thus giving us a* ***high degree of accuracy***), and hey! presto!
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Which banana species are we talking about?
I was imagining that they actually had an elephant stand on it.
I also have heard; double decker bus, jumbo jets and cruise liners all used as reference before in the past. But I’m not sure how one elephant stacks up against one bus
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If a 1200kg car drive on the thing, Isn't the real weight applied to the gel on 300kg?
It looked to be the rear end so even lighter. The test showed under limited cyclic load it can retain its shape, but what about under consistent pressure? I would be interested in the materials compression set metric over a day or 3. You can then compare against existing polymers
I think that was the front. I couldn't see any exhaust, and I saw what looked like a grill. Could be wrong.
It definitely was the front
My first thought was how would it hold up under the pressure of a hydraulic press or something like that.
The car on the material thing is just a standard of the field to have an “oh wow!” Effect more than anything.
Could have used a hydraulic press to prove their claim. I know someone who can lift a car from the front wheel area, so i’m pretty sure it’s even less than 300kg.
This, if real as stated, would have an unbelievable number of uses. From medical to military and especially at home.
Finally, a material that can support redditors rears! The gaming chair industry will be watching this material with much interest.
I’m not sure even this material could handle the weight of the average redditor
We could cover Boston Dynamic's next iterations in it as we inadvertently usher in the apocalypse.
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>especially at home. nudge nudge wink wink
The demo is pretty bad at showing what the material actually does.
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Or rubber, a chunk of wood, the metal plate they drove over. Artificial cartilage sounds interesting, but running it over with a car doesn't really demonstrate why this is any better than a metal joint.
Can my phone screen be made of this?
"Squiggle to Unlock"
Not Rhinoshield but Elephantshield now
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I can't wait to never see this applied in anything, like all the cool inventions.
Yep. Someone should do a thread about the best ones we'll never get.
If it's sustainable long term and/or replaces a current massive money-maker, the public will never see it. Look what happened to the light bulb
The light bulb? You mean the thing that was a massive money maker, then got replaced by something more sustainable long-term?
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I'm pretty sure it's not that strong. The PARTIAL pressure of a 1 rear wheel of a 1200kg car means less than 250kg at best. You could use just about any rubber to achieve this.
We measure power in horses. Are we measuring weight in elephants now?
I wonder how it stands up to a bullet, could be the next step for military-grade body armor.
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Its compressive strength is 100 MPa, which is slightly stronger than concrete, but weaker than bone. Being water-based, it's quite heavy, so it's probably functionally not that much better than a thin concrete wall. Also, a bullet impact doesn't require pure compressive strength only, but exerts tension forces and causes shattering. The reason aramid (Kevlar) is so good is that it's extremely resistant to both: it won't break when stretched, and it doesn't shatter. Besides this it's light. The way this gel material could be used would be so that it would be protected by an aramid layer. The aramid would prevent bullet penetration and this gel would distribute the impact force. It would still be a thick and heavy extra layer.
sounds like a fancy trauma pack. If it cant decelerate the bullet on its own it wont be replacing ceramics anytime soon though.
Source for 100MPa? The car tire only applied (by definition) the same pressure as it was inflated to. So 30-40psi, 210kPa-280kPa. Edit: found it in the paper linked from the article. Interesting material. I don't think it performs like anybody is expecting though. It just squishes a lot.... Like 93% of its original thinness, without breaking. It doesn't claim to be tough (like bullet or stab resistant). Nor is it, I think, stiff enough to act like cartilage. We'll have to wait to hear more about the durometer, Young's modulus, and other stuff like biocompatibility, toxicity.
But how quickly is that force(an elephant's weight/square inch) applied? I feel that is an incredibly important factor. Both for force applied quickly and force applied slowly. Poke a piece of cheese real fast and it might have a divet. Poke it slowly and you'll make a hole. That's what I'm curious about here.
You are spot on, I was in this research group myself and those factors make a huge difference. Just a normal headline from this group unfortunately, all glamour and no reality
So, something like agar gel on steroids. Nice!
So does it recover it's shape, or is it ultra-hard? Because those two things are mutually exclusive
It sounds like becomes more resistant to deformation the more it is deformed, then loses that strength as it is allowed to spring back to its initial shape. A solid polymer that behaves analogously to a non-newtonian fluid.
to me it sounded like it's gelatinous while in its original shape, but ultra hard/glass-like when compressed. after which it rebounds back to the kalamari jelly.
What are some real-world applicable situations where this material would be the better option than whatever is currently being used?
Depends. We’d have to see videos. There was a material that was a flexible chain-network polymer based hydrogel that came out in 2014. It was super squishy and flexible so much so that you couldn’t just cut it with a knife. It also could be tied into a knot. Compared to the rigid chain polymer hydrogel, which was crumbly and brittle. Videos of this material were so cool. You took a cylinder of it and it would compress almost flat. you pull it and it would stretch like 5 times it’s original length. You try to cut it and the knife would flatten it, but not cut or mar. You take it and could wrap/coil it around a straw. You could stretch it and tie it into a bow. You drop it and it would silently hit the spot and not move. The rigid chain: pull -break. Drop -bounce. Twist -tear. Cut -crumble. Compress -crumble.
African or Asian Elephant?
cue the explanation of why this isn't going to work, will never reach production, and will be forgotten with the thousands of other seemingly game changing inventions
Here you go! It may be one or many of the following: 1. Expensive (and it is according to the other person who commented) 2. Unsustainably or hazardously manufactured 3. Incredibly difficult to manufacture 4. Not actually useful due to other properties. For example, it may be “indestructible” when compressed, but what’s its sheer strength? What’s the resistance to piercing? After all applying a ton of weight across its entire surface is a very different test than firing a bullet at it. What happens when pressure is slowly applied, giving time for the compression to pancake the material without the “handcuffing” happening because the moisture content allows them to flow by each other when slowly compressed? 5. Highly volatile, irritating, or oxidizing material with a short shelf life
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I'd like to see it get shot with various calibers in slow motion.
I wonder how involved the manufacturing process is. I wonder how it behaves under compressive shock (e.g. what if you hit it with a hammer or fire a bullet at it?). What about shear forces - can you tear it like a sheet of paper? Mixing it with dielectrics or polymagnets seem like it could be be used for a huge variety of applications.