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Eggshells, bones and the buildings of tomorrow
... biomimetics: how nature is inspiring the technology and materials of the future. But what exactly is it and how can ... nature so we can use our inspiration by thinking about the materials. How they're made, how they're structured and then ... - And this is what Michelle specialises in, using natural materials like bone and egg shell to create a new structural ...
How are new batteries developed?
... Berkeley National Laboratory in California. I look at materials and I try to predict their properties from quantum ... go under the seats. So they're huge and if we could find materials that are smaller, cheaper or have more ... are you trying to do that? Kristin - I try and design new materials in the computer, and I can calculate the properties ...
Structure: The future of wearable materials
... later, but I guess that's where we're going with materials now in general. We're thinking much more about the ... is it so different to be using the structure and shape of materials in this way? Jess - Because I think for a long ... we used to make swords and everything like that, we had materials and we took them and made them smaller. We went ...
Why are reflective jackets brighter at dusk?
... the daylight from the sun. And then you have reflective materials which are basically reflecting the light that is ... related not only to the colours which are in this jacket. Materials are also in the way of how we see, so the contrast ... the light at night. So it will be a combination of the materials that you are using so you will have fluorescent ...
Beyond lithium Ion batteries
... lighter, less expensive, recyclable, using Earth-abundant materials. So, we need to advance the technology, not just ... explore how to build these better batteries? Jeff - It's a materials challenge, developing new active materials down to the nano or meso scale as well as the ...
Using space to construct metals and materials
... It could also hold the key to the next big breakthrough in materials construction. That’s the thinking behind the ... it's possible to commercialize it. Will - And what sort of materials would benefit from being made up in space? Andrew - ... a massive advantage of being made in space. Crystalline materials include alloys, semiconductors, but also proteins ...
Magnetic Anapoles
... to be most important in understanding a complex set of materials which are also able to conduct electricity without ... anapoles in high temperature superconductors. These are materials that once they reach a certain temperature, they ... temperature of a superconducting material, and some of the materials are extremely simple, elemental, then they lose ...
Can you play a chocolate trumpet?
Chris Smith put this question to materials scientist Anna Ploszajski... Anna - I was, yeah. I brought my talk 'A materials and making odyssey' to the Royal Institution. It ... talk really is a sort of romp through lots of different materials. And the story of the book is how I am a relatively ...
Plastic in wind turbines?
... it's the blades where all the composite and the plastic materials are. Verner - Why are plastics used for the blades? ... reinforced plastics. The other key advantage of composite materials is also their great strength and stiffness to ... are not any old plastics, they're so-called 'composite materials'. So what are composite materials? Darshil - In ...
Making Metals Stronger
... often with world-altering consequences. And although the materials scientists of today have largely swapped a hammer ... advanced scientific equipment money can buy, the quest for materials with superior qualities continues. Take, for ... temperatures and under greater stresses, meaning the materials inside them also have to withstand much harsher ...
Making a brick as light as a feather
As a general rule, materials that are strong also tend to be heavy. And, in the ... scientist Julia Greer is using 3D printing to produce new materials with shapes and structures that make them super ... to also control its strength. And so, we are able to make materials that are both really strong and really ...
Turning landfill into energy
... called gasification, which involves turning carbon-based materials into gas by heating them to a high temperature but ... advanced implementation, however, a much broader range of materials can be processed, and the output gas is much ... greater than 700°C, a lot of hydrocarbon-based materials break down into a gas of carbon monoxide and ...
Materials Maketh the Jet Engine
... and they need to be able to rely on specially developed materials that can handle that environment whilst still being ... walked me along the enormous Trent engine to explain the materials that go in to its manufacture. Dave - Okay, at ... That's absolutely right and the main reason for composite materials, they're both stiff and they're very light so we ...
Boron Carbide Nanowires
One of the hottest areas of materials science is the development of composite materials, that combine the useful features of two or more pure materials. It is often useful to mix the materials as ...
Imitating a butterfly's wing
... of researchers are using this technology to developing new materials including a polymer which changes colour as it ... out. So, the idea of nanophotonics is, can we design materials where they have this really intricate architecture ... the structure of nature, we have to look at different materials rather than the ones that we're used to. Jeremy - ...
Making lithium Ion batteries better
... And so, if we can figure out how we can make other layered materials cycle. So charge and discharge, pulling out all of ... the fact that you've got a fact of two just sitting in the materials we used today. If we could get that to work, that's ... and we talked about lithium cobalt oxide. So there are materials out there where people replace the cobalt with ...
Bright Future for Solar Cells
... light and reemit it at a different wavelength, new solar materials will have to include at least one extra step to ... two together. And this complicates everything. A lot. Materials already exist that can convert one high energy ... sunlight (like X-rays), or they aren't very effective. Materials that combine two low-energy photons into one ...
Copper solar cell creates "all in one" reaction factory
... expensive to produce. So we've been using copper based materials, which are at the moment very inefficient. We'd be ... electricity, we can start making very interesting materials and making green fuels. So this is for example, ... that could be used either in energy applications or in materials developments as well. So this is all done by green ...
Recycling EV batteries
... the industry will struggle to continue to source the materials needed to make new cars and batteries if we haven’t got a way to supplement supplies of raw materials. Megan McGregor spoke to Birmingham University’s ... to slice it apart very carefully without contaminating the materials in the battery, and if you were able to scrape off ...
Harder, better, stronger: keeping armour bullet proof
One of the many challenges facing the world of materials innovation is in the area of protection from high ... of the bullet as it progresses into the armour plate. The materials of choice for such commercial ballistic armours are ... grades of steel belong to this class of extremely hard materials. For these materials a force even as high as impact ...
Powerful vibrations
Piezo-electric materials produce an electric current when they change shape, ... at alternative energy sources. And this is piezoelectric materials come in. piezoelectric materials are a special class of materials which when you ...
Thermo-Electric Generators
... gradient, the more of a push that the charges in these materials get. So inside the semi-conductor, you have a ... in the 1800s, there was no information on semi-conducting materials for example. Everything was either an insulator ... tiny voltages for them, but with the application of modern materials and modern engineering, we're in a position to ...
Electric cars: under the bonnet
... is not that hard to generate if you wire up the right two materials. If we connect together two conducting materials, one that is not too fussed about holding on to its ... or because it becomes covered during the process in other materials that subsequently prevent the reverse flow of ...
Preserving Plastics
... but conservators are also finding that more modern materials like plastic are also degrading. We spoke to Anita ... to look into the chemical reasons to why these materials are starting to degrade. Chris - Because of course, ... really were coming together to create these new man-made materials. And the ironic thing behind is that a lot of these ...
From The Birth of Flight to the Great War
... this, is of course, that not only was it made of heavy materials like cast iron, et cetera, you also had to carry ... important difference was not so much the design, as the materials... Peter - Well, the main change was finding materials that would be strong enough, but light enough, so ...