New and Better Materials We are experimenting with a lot of different materials. Some of these materials we have known about for hundreds and thousands of years. One of these materials is so ancient we don’t even know the first time it was used. I am talking about wood. Today wood is responsible for many of the things we build in this country and in others. Scientists thought wood might be able to be turned into something even more useful and worked with this material for years trying to better it and I think what they found even surprised them. They found they could do something with wood, just a couple of years ago we would have laughed at this suggestion, but they said they had been able to make wood transparent. They not only were able to make the wood transparent, but give it the ability to absorb and release heat. Not only is this type of wood easier to handle than glass, but it cuts the cost of heating and cooling a structure. If you have the sun shining on a window you know how hot it gets, but transparent wood intercepts this heat and holds it until night when it releases it into the building for a constant temperature. A second thing has been created with wood and it is Super Wood. Scientists have managed to make wood stronger than steel. This new Super Wood can be used in building skyscrapers. It turns out it is also great for body armor and can stop all sorts of projectiles from injuring its wearer. After the wood is boiled and treated with sodium hydroxide it is compressed and gently heated. The result of this simple process is Super Wood. The wood created can be up to 50 times more resistant to compression and about 20 times as stiff and can be molded into any shape. Kevlar is still the best bullet stopper, but this wood is almost as good and only cost 5% as much as Kevlar. There is talk somewhere down the line our cars could be made from this wood. Another use is the building of structures with this almost indestructible material. There seems to be no reason steel would be needed at all in tall buildings anymore when this material is perfected. On thing I haven’t heard mentioned is insects like carpenter ants and termites. Could they bring down a future building? One of the new materials out there is something scientists and engineers have wanted to perfect for many years. It is a material which can fix itself. When a hole forms in the material, for whatever reason, it releases a polymer which oozes into the hole to repair it. It is said the polymer clots like blood. It is composed of separate liquids which when broken combine to make the healing substance. The engineers don’t want to stop here, they want to create cement, metal and other materials which will also be self-healing. This could be invaluable to the military. Think of a plane which gets hit with a shell and the hole is repaired because the plane detected it and repaired it without any help from the pilot or crew. There is an estimate which states about two-thirds of all energy we use is wasted. When you feel something is warm or hot it is an indication energy is being wasted by turning into heat and dissipating. A new generator was introduced that absorbs waste heat and turns it back into energy. It just plugs into the exhaust pipe of your car. Now the scientists are working on a material which would do this and all you would have to do is wrap it around the offending object and it would turn your energy loss back into energy. Right off the bat I can think of a lot of places where this would be useful. The first place which comes to mind is the International Space Station then ships at sea, and electric vehicles. There are plenty of more uses for something like this and I have only highlighted a few uses. A material which has been experimented with for about a hundred years may become the material of choice for solar cells. Today we use traditional crystalline silicon solar cells, but scientists think they can use perovskites. The traditional solar cells operate at about 20 percent efficiency. When perovskites were first used in solar cells their efficiency in 2009 was 3.8%. Just a few years later in 2014 it jumped up to 19.3%. Scientists are convinced they can improve it even more and then there is the cost factor. Perovskites are far cheaper to use. Just as in all electronics, prices are coming down. Everyone is excited about Graphene. Why not, it is now the strongest material on earth? It is 10 times stronger than steel. It can consist of just one layer of atoms. The material is extremely light and opens the door to all sorts of uses where strength and weight come into question. Imagine how one could reduce the weight of a plane and yet retain the planes rigid structure using this material. What an advantage you would have in fuel consumption. The same is true for automobiles, ships and just about any object of transportation. Again, we are talking about something which could easily lend itself to weapons creation and defense. Scientists have said it is not the number of atoms used in the material which is the most important thing, it is the way they are aligned. It seems many different places and countries are developing materials which are far stronger than steel. It is important to note while a material may be stronger, it may have properties which are unwanted for the task of the object. For example, if a material is used on a rocket it must have a very high melting point so it doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere. This is only one illustration. There have been a lot of announcements about new materials and many of them compare themselves to steel and I have seen the range go from equal to the strength of steel to ten times the strength of steel. With all these labs testing so many new materials we have no idea what they may come up with. There is one thing for sure and it is whatever the material is it will be an improvement over what it will replace and I am sure those replacements will come soon and for all we know some of these materials are already being used in secret government projects.
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