http://www.physorg.com/news184310039.html
The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable.
Neato!
The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds.
Three cheers for American ingenuity!
Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company.
Oh.
Anyway, I wonder how well this stuff works on paper. If it works well, it might be time to hose down my library with it, and then bury the technical books in the back yard somewhere. Maybe, a few decades down the line, America will awaken from its slide into socialist anti-science slumber, and there will be a need to read up on how to actually “make stuff” and “do stuff” again.
6 Responses to “Spray-on glass”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Hummm.
My wife is Turkish, and is also an RF IC engineer (basically an analogue chip designer). All of her training took place in Turkey before she moved over to the UK. It is a very highly-skilled and somewhat obscure job.
Turkey has some very good universities and technology companies. If you do not mind me saying, I found the tone of this article kind of… bigoted. Or perhaps that was the point you were trying to make.
If you want America to compete then you will have to accept that other countries can also do things well. Failure to realise this is one of the things that hamstrung the British Empire in late Victorian times. This was clear even as early as the Great Exhibition in 1851, when some of the American manufactures displayed were far superior to the British equivalents. We paid no notice, and the open markets hammered us…
Extend and embrace – it is part of what made America great.
> I found the tone of this article kind of… bigoted.
In what way, exactly?
> Extend and embrace – it is part of what made America great.
Other parts were Competition and Innovation. These are now wholly-owned subsidiaries of Laziness and Collectivism.
This stuff sounds pretty damned cool, and the paint industry is NOT going to like it. This will be like the conversion to base coat/clear coat paint system in vehicle painting. Bet it is easy to add color to.
>> I found the tone of this article kind of… bigoted.
>In what way, exactly?
Okay, I’ll try and explain what I meant. Firstly, this is very of-topic, so feel free to delete / ignore as applicable. Secondly, I do not mean to cause any offence.
The article read to me as if the thinking was: Hey, some cool new technology! It has to be made in the US, right? Then, later: Oh, it wasn’t. Who’d have thought Turkey could have done that? (i.e. Turkey was highlighted, and not Germany). I’m perhaps over-sensitive to that as my wife is Turkish. Apologies if that was not your intent.
I read a great many blogs on technology, and many of the comments sections are filled with people for whom their respective countries are the best in the world at everything, and feel the need to belittle other countries. This does all sides a disservice.
An example is the oft-discussed similarities between US and Russian planes in the cold war. No end of people say things like ‘Russian plane x is just a copy of American plane y’. Whilst there was undoubtedly a great deal of espionage going on in all directions, many of the similarities are down to little more than convergent evolution to meet the same basic objectives. There are exceptions, of course.
I am sometimes guilty of this, but I try to stop myself. 😉
As I said, off-topic.
> The article read to me as if the thinking was: Hey, some cool new technology! It has to be made in the US, right?
If by “article” you mean my award-winning-worthy commentary, then, yes, you’ve nailed it.
> Then, later: Oh, it wasn’t.
Exactly so.
The purpose was not to disparage Turkey or Germany… but the United States. There once was a time when it was a safe bet that if a new innovation was announced, it was probably American. That time probably still includes today. But the US is in , or heading into, a serious innovative decline, thanks to so many adopting a collectivist “why should I bother, I’ll just get goodies from Da Gubmint” attitude.
A nation that does not innovate is going into decline. A government and a people that don’t give a rats ass about pushing boundaries are not going to innovate.
> No end of people say things like ‘Russian plane x is just a copy of American plane y’. Whilst there was undoubtedly a great deal of espionage going on in all directions, many of the similarities are down to little more than convergent evolution to meet the same basic objectives. There are exceptions, of course.
There are a *lot* of exceptions. Buran/Shuttle, Tu-144/Concord, Tu-160/B-1, HL-20/BOR-4, Tu-4/B-29 all spring immediately to mind.
It is my distinct impression that the HL-20 is a copy of BOR-4 and not vice versa.