Spider Silk and Buckminsterfullerine...
MJestic469
bulletproof vest)... Has anyone heard of the research where they are making
atificial spider silk? If you don't know, spider silk is five times stronger
than steel, and 2 to 3 times as elastic as nylon. To put this in perspective,
a pencil thick strand could theoretically stop a 747 in flight. Now, if you
combine or somehow impregnate spider silk with Carbon 60 (aka
buckminsterfullerine or buckyballs and buckytubes - twenty times the strength
of steel and very flexable), you could produce a material that could protect
you from bumps, scrapes, bullets, etc... and be waterproof as well as have the
texture of most clothing. Does anyone know of any kind of research like this?
I'd love to hear some discussions about this...
Thanks,
Kelly
MJest...@aol.com
Uncle Al
Spectra has about 20 times the specific tensile strength of steel, and
it is only polyethylene.
The strength of a composite is not just its components, but how they are
bonded. Buckeytubes don't stick to anything. Unless you can grow them
a few meters long each...
Woven body armor will stop a .357 magnum round, but it affords
esentially no protection against a slim, sharp knife blade. The blade
goes right in, cutting the fibers.
Have you ever worn body armor? It is stiff, hot, and heavy. In the
summer or during exertion it is horrible. Kevlar body armor performance
degrades when wet with sweat. Both Spectra and Kevlar are sensitive to
UV light.
If you go back in the literature 5 or 10 years you will see proposals to
grow cellulose fibers in cell culture. The idea was that the end of the
fiber attached to the cotton seed is fractured off, which leads to
pilling in the finished fabric. Cell-cultured fibers would have both
termini smooth and therefore be premium textile fiber. Alas, few people
cared to pay $20,000 for a polo shirt.
Look around. Anything that comes out of cell culture costs its weight
in gold (at least for starters). This is fine for erythropoeitin or
human blood clotting factors (until somebody sneaks the stuff into
gene-geneered goats' milk). You cannot afford to cell culture a cheap
bulk commodity even for a premium in performance - unless government
subsidized.
If you substituted a silkworm's gene cluster with a spider's, that might
be mildly interesting and commercially viable. This is an intelligent
solution, and therefore socially forbidden. Enviro-Luddites, eternal
ememies of progress in its every form, won't tolerate anything that is
not expensive, shoddy, and deadly.
--
Uncle Al Schwartz
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal/
http://www.guyy.demon.co.uk/uncleal/
http://uncleal.within.net/
(Toxic URLs! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Dale Woika
imagine the spinnerets from a 3 or 4 foot spider could produce
incredible thread/ropes, and we could feed the super spiders on an
unlimited supply of spammers which seemingly have no other utility.
OK, I guess we should be responsible and breed giant silkworms instead.
However, silkworms only eat white mulberry (Morus alba) leaves, and we
are going to have to have huge tracts of land devoted to mulberry
production to feed the things.
Spammers are dirt cheap and available now. Once we exhaust the supply,
we can start on the legal profession.
You decide.
dw
Uncle Al wrote:
>
>
> If you substituted a silkworm's gene cluster with a spider's, that might
> be mildly interesting and commercially viable. This is an intelligent
> solution, and therefore socially forbidden. Enviro-Luddites, eternal
> ememies of progress in its every form, won't tolerate anything that is
> not expensive, shoddy, and deadly.
>
> MJestic469 wrote:
> >
> > Hey, I have a really cool idea for clothing (which would double as a
> > bulletproof vest)... Has anyone heard of the research where they are making
> > atificial spider silk? If you don't know, spider silk is five times stronger
> > than steel, and 2 to 3 times as elastic as nylon.
> > To put this in perspective,
> > a pencil thick strand could theoretically stop a 747 in flight.
Metal fatigue will apparently stop a 747 in flight.
Neil Russell
I read an article in a magazine called Focus earlier this year. It described
all that your suggesting.
Unfortunatly I dont still have the article and I cant remember who was
involved in the reasearch. Sorry
Neil Russell
MJestic469 wrote in message
<19990709115135...@ng-cg1.aol.com>...
>Hey, I have a really cool idea for clothing (which would double as a
>bulletproof vest)... Has anyone heard of the research where they are
making
>atificial spider silk? If you don't know, spider silk is five times
stronger
>than steel, and 2 to 3 times as elastic as nylon. To put this in
perspective,
>a pencil thick strand could theoretically stop a 747 in flight. Now, if
you
>combine or somehow impregnate spider silk with Carbon 60 (aka
>buckminsterfullerine or buckyballs and buckytubes - twenty times the
strength
>of steel and very flexable), you could produce a material that could
protect
>you from bumps, scrapes, bullets, etc... and be waterproof as well as have
the
>texture of most clothing. Does anyone know of any kind of research like
this?
>I'd love to hear some discussions about this...
>
>Thanks,
>
>Kelly
>MJest...@aol.com
Mark Grimbley
toughness/Impact/tear resistance etc, unfortunately the technology to handle this
material has not been developed.
Uncle Al
Immediately after the reactives are cast cover the surface with a single
layer of polythene plastic wrap. My grandmother's pudding
phase-separated into fibrous reinforcement, like Al/Cu. It was all one
could do to pry it from its mold and gnaw at its underside (though the
mango tactic might have worked).
Uncle Al
>
> Correction.
>
> Carbon Fullerene Nanotubes are ONE HUNDRED TIMES (at least. possibally 100-150
> times) stronger than steel at 1/6th the weight. NOT merely 20 times (which is
> still a decent number)
Anybody can grow single crystal metal or ceramic whiskers of surpassing
strength and stiffness, or deposit superlattices nearly as hard as
diamond. The identical stuff as ingots (cm) never even begins to
measure up. When you increase the dimensions you get lattice
imperfections.
I can buy Kevlar or Spectra or carbon fiber in essentially unlimited
lengths. I can get them prepregged thermoset or thermoplastic. What is
the longest buckeytube, 50 microns? What do you use to pot them?
Chopped fiber reinforcement is only as useful as its ability to be
grabbed by a matrix. If they are universally slippery then they could
be infinitely strong and it would be about as significant as tits on a
boar hog.
High aspect ratio micron-scale rigid insoluble fibers are Officially
carcinogenic. Buckeylung! Lawsuits, EPA pogroms, OSHA fines, Haz-Mat
bills...
Science is the discovery.
Engineering is the reduction to practice.
Technology is the assembly line.
Marketing is the hype.
Sales is the payoff.
There is only one entry on a spreadsheet - money. When you can supply
buckeytubes like carbon fiber, you're in business. Until the RFP
becomes a PO and then an FOB shipped 30 days net, it's only theory.
What gets done is what gets counted.
I will gaurntee you one thing - if and when there is reduction to
commercial practice the construct won't look anything like the initial
estimates.
Ian St. John
Uncle Al <uncl...@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:3789419B...@hate.spam.net...
> SpyKnife wrote:
> >
> > Correction.
> >
> > Carbon Fullerene Nanotubes are ONE HUNDRED TIMES (at least.
possibally 100-150
> > times) stronger than steel at 1/6th the weight. NOT merely 20
times (which is
> > still a decent number)
1: Carbon nanotubes are of various sizes, not just stretched
Buckministerfullerene.
2: They also have different strength depending on the angle of the
spiral stiching.
3: Tensile strength estimated to 400 GigaPascals. Anyone got better
numbers?
>
> Anybody can grow single crystal metal or ceramic whiskers of
surpassing
> strength and stiffness, or deposit superlattices nearly as hard as
> diamond. The identical stuff as ingots (cm) never even begins to
> measure up. When you increase the dimensions you get lattice
> imperfections.
Carbon nanotubes will be to some degree 'self ordering' in that a
different sized atom won't fit. Any real imperfections will cause
breaks which will close up to form ends leading to shorter fibers
without the defects. You extrapolate too far, as you accuse others of
doing.
>
> I can buy Kevlar or Spectra or carbon fiber in essentially unlimited
> lengths. I can get them prepregged thermoset or thermoplastic.
What is
> the longest buckeytube, 50 microns? What do you use to pot them?
> Chopped fiber reinforcement is only as useful as its ability to be
> grabbed by a matrix. If they are universally slippery then they
could
> be infinitely strong and it would be about as significant as tits on
a
> boar hog.
>
> High aspect ratio micron-scale rigid insoluble fibers are Officially
> carcinogenic. Buckeylung! Lawsuits, EPA pogroms, OSHA fines,
Haz-Mat
> bills...
Not to mention conductive. I wonder about their potential to short or
initiate arcing on pc boards or other electronics. Probably require
special precautions, and use only in matrix only to reduce loose
sections.
>
> Science is the discovery.
> Engineering is the reduction to practice.
> Technology is the assembly line.
> Marketing is the hype.
> Sales is the payoff.
>
> There is only one entry on a spreadsheet - money. When you can
supply
> buckeytubes like carbon fiber, you're in business. Until the RFP
> becomes a PO and then an FOB shipped 30 days net, it's only theory.
> What gets done is what gets counted.
This is a newsgroup, not an order form. Perhaps you missed it?
>
> I will gaurntee you one thing - if and when there is reduction to
> commercial practice the construct won't look anything like the
initial
> estimates.
No. They could be better..
Material Fellow
materials science.
THE hot topic for a brief time was the growth of metal wiskers (iron and
others) with strengths approaching 1,000,000 psi ( one million ).
GOD, were folks being promised DRAMATIC LEAPS in materials by the
futuristic pompous DRONES.
The superstrength metal wisker game died a slow death....
------------------------------------------------------------------
Er,,,, what you have been writing looks and sounds a lot like those old
DRONES....
You do understand seasoned cynical commentary to big boastful bulletins.
Thought you would, in your wisdom, understand (eventually - maybe 20
years).
jim buch
SpyKnife wrote:
>
> Correction.
>
> Carbon Fullerene Nanotubes are ONE HUNDRED TIMES (at least. possibally 100-150
> times) stronger than steel at 1/6th the weight. NOT merely 20 times (which is
> still a decent number)
>
SpyKnife
SpyKnife
>grow cellulose fibers in cell culture. The idea was that the end of the
>fiber attached to the cotton seed is fractured off, which leads to
>pilling in the finished fabric. Cell-cultured fibers would have both
>termini smooth and therefore be premium textile fiber. Alas, few people
>cared to pay $20,000 for a polo shirt.
>
>Look around. Anything that comes out of cell culture costs its weight
>in gold (at least for starters). This is fine for erythropoeitin or
>human blood clotting factors (until somebody sneaks the stuff into
>gene-geneered goats' milk). You cannot afford to cell culture a cheap
>bulk commodity even for a premium in performance - unless government
>subsidized.
>
>be mildly interesting and commercially viable. This is an intelligent
>solution, and therefore socially forbidden. Enviro-Luddites, eternal
And you think luddites have any real pull? That view is dying out.
Also one of the benefits of bio molecular engineering is that it can be low
cost and cheap to grow cell cultures.
Alan R Rosenfield
> Carbon nanotubes : Tensile strength estimated to 400 GigaPascals.
I'm having trouble with these claims of strength of various forms of
carbon. When people write that their strength is some large
multiple of that of steel, what steel are they referring to? My guess is
that it is old-fashioned mild steel (yield about 140 MPa). However, one
can buy commercial lots of steel with strengths up to around 2 GPa, or about
one percent of the elastic modulus, which is 200 GPa.
When I was in school the maximum theoretical strentgth of materials was
about ten percent of the elastic modulus. So the tensile strength estimate
of 400 GPa implies an elastic modulus of around 4000 GPa, which I have
difficulty believing is achieved by any material.
The bigger issue is that of the promise of new materials. During my
professional career that dates back almost 50 years a whole series of
wonderfully strong materials have been touted. And some have proven out in
specialized applications (my wife has an artificial knee partiallly made
of Ti 6/4). But steel, wood, and concrete are still the dominant
construction materials. I don't expect to be driving over a buckyball
bridge any time soon.
--
Al Rosenfield
1650 Ridgway Pl., Columbus OH 43212 USA
phone: 614/486-8892; fax: 614/481-8038
e-mail <aro...@gcfn.org>
Material Fellow
Hype is ever with us .... isn't it.
Pretty much we keep selling "land in Florida - ready access to water"
over and over again.
"Metal Whiskers of incredible strength"
"Ductile Ceramics"
These were two of the hypes when I went to school.
But it sounds so good saying it. Really cool sounding. Still largely
hype.
I first heard Spider Silk as hype in the 1970's. 25 years ago. Never
really dies, slowly moves along.
"metal matrix composites" was another really HOT 1960's thing with the
Boron / Aluminum composites... gonna take over the world any minute.
Well, the B/Al structural tubes were used on the frame of the Space
Shuttle.
Hype.
Hype is Human.
I have some material technology from the planet Vega ... from Dr. Spock
himself.
jim buch
Jonathan Guyer
mjest...@aol.com (MJestic469) wrote:
> Hey, I have a really cool idea for clothing (which would double as a
> bulletproof vest)... Has anyone heard of the research where they are making
> atificial spider silk?
Back in May, Dr. Lynn Jelinski, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge,
LA gave a talk at NIST on her Golden Orb Weaver silk research. Neat work,
especially her space-age silk collection apparatus (her son's Erector Set
helicopter)
I'm not sure if this is accessible from the world, but her abstract is at
<http://ois.nist.gov/ts/250/techcal/search/display.cfm?uniqueid+023345Fredd0.76905215>
One of her main points was that people overestimate the usefulness of
spider silk. Sure, it's got a great strength-to-weight ratio and it's
extremely elastic. As she said, though, that means that the bullet won't
pierce your spider-silk bullet-proof-vest, but the vest will pierce _you_
while it absorbs the impact. Not so cool. Likewise, an airplane wing that
deflects 150% on takeoff might be a little disturbing to the passengers.
She also surmised that it'll be highly non-trivial to reengineer spider
silk to our needs. Spider silk has been optimized over millions of years
to suit spiders' needs, not ours. The structure is remarkably complex and
all appears to be "necessary"; tweak it a little and it's likely to not
work at all.
I'm paraphrasing (and perhaps completely misinterpreting) Dr. Jelinski's
talk from two months ago, so please consult her or her literature directly
before jumping to any conclusions about her work.
--
Jonathan E. Guyer, PhD
National Research Council Associate
<http://www.eeel.nist.gov/812/>
My statements should not be taken to represent NIST
Christopher B Specker
: > Carbon nanotubes : Tensile strength estimated to 400 GigaPascals.
: I'm having trouble with these claims of strength of various forms of
: carbon. When people write that their strength is some large
: multiple of that of steel, what steel are they referring to? My guess is
: that it is old-fashioned mild steel (yield about 140 MPa). However, one
: can buy commercial lots of steel with strengths up to around 2 GPa, or about
: one percent of the elastic modulus, which is 200 GPa.
: When I was in school the maximum theoretical strentgth of materials was
: about ten percent of the elastic modulus. So the tensile strength estimate
: of 400 GPa implies an elastic modulus of around 4000 GPa, which I have
: difficulty believing is achieved by any material.
: The bigger issue is that of the promise of new materials. During my
: professional career that dates back almost 50 years a whole series of
: wonderfully strong materials have been touted. And some have proven out in
: specialized applications (my wife has an artificial knee partiallly made
: of Ti 6/4). But steel, wood, and concrete are still the dominant
: construction materials. I don't expect to be driving over a buckyball
: bridge any time soon.
: --
: Al Rosenfield
: 1650 Ridgway Pl., Columbus OH 43212 USA
: phone: 614/486-8892; fax: 614/481-8038
: e-mail <aro...@gcfn.org>
It's not just the strength that's impressive for buckeytubes.
Try stretching other materials to 120% their original length without
plastic deformation.
--
?????
Terry Harper
>
>THE hot topic for a brief time was the growth of metal wiskers (iron and
>others) with strengths approaching 1,000,000 psi ( one million ).
>
glass fibre rovings with strength of 300-350,000 psi in epoxy laminates. The
theoretical strength was in excess of 1,000,000 psi. Single filaments you
could get to show 500,000 psi, but not practically.
A lot of this was used for rocket booster motors, for example. High modulus
fibres gave some extra stiffness, which is usually the problem with high
strength fibre. In a use-once application, like a rocket motor, the margin
of safety can be much lower, so the power to weight ratio can be much
higher.
--
Terry Harper
Acting Webmaster, The Omnibus Society http://www.omnibussoc.org
E-mail: terry....@btinternet.com
URL: http://www.btinternet.com/~terry.harper/
Jonathan Guyer
> I'm not sure if this is accessible from the world, but her abstract is at
>
>
<http://ois.nist.gov/ts/250/techcal/search/display.cfm?uniqueid+023345Fredd0.76905215>
Try this:
<http://ois.nist.gov/ts/250/techcal/check.CFM?uniqueID=023345Fredd0%2E76905215>
--
Jonathan E. Guyer
Material Fellow
strong glass fibers he drew in the lab in the 1920's.
It was a fire cause by the glass equipment that caused his managers to
kick him out of "materials" work and got him onto propulsion
engineering, including the early British jet engine technology that we
got in trade during WWII
So from the 1920's in the lab to 1960's in the factory ain't too bad.
You forgot that the sizings on the glass fibers were the key to
commercial success. Without the protective sizings, Griffith cracks
would be induced by abrasion handling, and the "super strength fibers"
would be worhtless.....
jim buch
---------------------------------------------------------------
History is nice. There is a lot of it.
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