Transparent Aluminum a Reality

TuballoyThunder writes "Many of us remember the scene from Star Trek IV where Scotty barters the formula for transparent aluminum for a small run. It now appears that we can now add transparent aluminum to the science fact column."

Coming soon to a school court near you!

[marsperson (909862)]

The ability to wrap your mother's sandwiches in transparent aluminum and loose your apetite before you even unwrap it!

Re:Unintended joke?

[somersault (912633)]

it's crazy how many people use loose instead of lose though. All those lil kids and wikipedians online these days are so impressionable you know, and the more instances that slide through, the more the problem will propagate. Capital punishment seems to be the way to go.

Re:Unintended joke?

[Citizen of Earth (569446)]

it's crazy how many people use loose instead of lose though.

Yeah, what loosers!

Re:Unintended joke?

[Jason1729 (561790)]

it would be cool to "see" a pc case made out of it thou (obviously you cant see it but you can pretend it's there :p)

You mean the way uoi can't see a case made oud of acrylic?

Damn, I had a drinking glass full of water on the table somewhere, if only it weren't invisible I could find it....oh yeah, clear != invisible.

Re:Unintended joke?

[indifferent children (842621)]

While you're spending your $1z on research, can you find out if transparent aluminum foil protects from government mind control rays as well as regular aluminum foil? Not that I'll believe your government-funded 'research'.

Re:Unintended joke?

[houghi (78078)]

can you find out if transparent aluminum foil protects from government mind control rays as well as regular aluminum foil?

Yes, it does. It is even much, much better, so change your regular with the transparent one.

Not that I'll believe your government-funded 'research'.

Oh, in that case: The transparent version does NOT protect you. The regular one is much better.

Now that I wrote that, you rpobably think the regular one is better. See? We are already in your head.

Re:Aluminium Reality or Aluminum Realty?

[MightyYar (622222)]

Here's the funny thing about language - it changes. Sometimes for a good reason, sometimes for a bad reason. Resisting that will doom you to a life of, well, posting frustrated comments on slashdot complaining about how people spell aluminum. In particular, this "mispronunciation" is about 100 years old, and no amount of slashdot posting is going to change that. Move on.

Re:Dude, 'Aluminium' *is* the correct one.

[MightyYar (622222)]

It IS deviant. But so is every word in the English language - that's how languages form. English is the bastardization of, what, some Germanic language? Throw in some Romance languages for good measure? Should we all be speaking "Grunt", the one true language, spoken properly by our Chimp forefathers?

Since you mentioned it, I went to the IUPAC website and searched for "Aluminum". You know what came up? Hundreds of IUPAC journals with the word spelled that way. Clearly they don't find it mangled or deviant enough to edit in their publications. Dude.

Standards compliance

[SkippyTPE (318952)]

It's amazing to me how many in the Slashdot crowd will jump up and down screaming about standards compliance until it comes to written English, whereupon the rules (i.e. - standards) are apparently taken as meaningless.

Re:Aluminium Reality or Aluminum Realty?

[mysticgoat (582871)]

When you can work out that a clause containing a transitive verb requires an object...you can criticise other people.

Sigh.

For about 250 years now, eddykatid idjits have been trying to convince the world that correct english grammar is the grammar of the dead latin language. They would try to surgically insert a skeleton into an octopus, then when the poor dead thing can't be posed in some natural way, they would assert that such a pose is in poor taste, and simply not done by the better octopusses. Gack.

English is not latin. True, there are some superficial resemblances, like the indisputable fact that in both, the spoken words are emitted from the caudal orifices of the speakers. But the concepts of "transitive verbs", "objects", "indirect objects", "clauses", and the like are ideas of latin that have been imposed upon english by people with small minds who can't accept that english grammar is a fuzzy thing. When they see other languages that have crystalline grammars with smashing hard facets and oh so sharp edges, they want english to be the same way.

Ya wanna larn to speke english right? Then realize that the game of english is the Calvin Ball of languages.

"Don't criticize what you can't understand" --B.D.

A Great Send-Off

[jIyajbe (662197)]

Very appropriate to announce this discovery at the same time James Doohan's remains are being sent into space. One wonders if there is a closet Trekker in the military press office. :-)

Cheers,

jIyajbe

Re:A Great Send-Off

[Spock the Baptist (455355)]

What do you want to bet that it was designed on a Macintosh...

Oh would that ever be sweet! :D

Re:A Great Send-Off

[CaptDeuce (84529)]

ALONtm is virtually scratch resistant, offers substantial impact resistance, and provides better durability and protection against armor piercing threats, at roughly half the weight and half the thickness of traditional glass transparent armor, said the lieutenant.

[time warp]

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Cupertino CA -- Apple Computer faces rising complaints of "scratches" that reportedly developed on the cases of their iPod Angstrom virtual reality player. The device, which feeds audio, video, and olfactory images directly to the brain, is implanted under the skin behind the ear, remaining there for up to three days. It is this repeated insertion and extraction of the device which causes scratches on the iPod's case.

"The scratches are obvious," say disgruntled user Mitch Burnsome, "I can see them clearly under my microscope, at maginications as low as 20 times. Apple's quality control is dreadful."

Apple responded that the iPod Angstrom case is very durable. "The case is made of ALONtm which is used as armor on tanks and Humvees; it's virtually scratch resistant," said Apple spokesperson Anton Natale. "Steve Jobs has been using a prototype for the past six months and declares that it works so well with his brain that it's 'sanely great'."

Since the release of the iPod Angstrom four hours ago, Apple has sold 7 million units. The price of Apple stock dropped 7% after analysts complained that sales were projected to be 7.1 million units by this time.

Re:A Great Send-Off

[SteveAyre (209812)]

Sorry but no, you must be wrong.

I just checked and I can't find any missing whales anywhere.

Re:A Great Send-Off

[jellomizer (103300)]

This story is starting to become almost a yearly tradition on Slashdot.

Transparent Aluminum a Reality
On October 18th, 2005 with 231 comments
TuballoyThunder writes "Many of us remember the scene from Star Trek IV where Scotty barters the formula for transparent aluminum for a small run. It now...

Transparent Aluminum Is Here [slashdot.org]
On August 23rd, 2004 with 625 comments
Alien54 writes "Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. (link includes a...

Transparent Aluminium [slashdot.org]
On February 20th, 2002 with 368 comments
Lynx writes "As the german magazine Spiegel reports, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies have developed a transparent tile made...

And that was from the first page of the search screen ordered by rank.

Re:A Great Send-Off

[Hognoxious (631665)]

To be even fairer, alumina isn't alumin{i}um and neither is alumin{i}um oxynitride, but all the headlines imply that it is.

hmm

[Gronkers (912221)]

Now if we could only arm our military vehicles with convential armor let alone the nifty new stuff..

Re:hmm

[B2382F29 (742174)]

Well, that would cost you an arm and a leg ... either way.

Hmm

[psilonaut (756938)]

How quaint.

Note to mods:

[mrchaotica (681592)]

The parent isn't offtopic; you just didn't get the Star Trek IV reference:

[after Scotty tries to talk into the mouse]

TECHNICIAN: "Just use the keyboard!"

SCOTTY: "The keyboard? How quaint."

The article is disappointing

[kg_o.O (802342)]

No pics :(

Re:The article is disappointing

[GroeFaZ (850443)]

Nothing for you to see here. Move along.

Re:The article is disappointing

[Erik Hensema (12898)]

Using some elite slashdot h4x0ring skillz, I am able to post a picture of transparent aluminum right here for you:








Nice, eh?

transparent oxide-nitride, not a metal

[Muhammar (659468)]

when you read the article, you find out that the material is not aluminum metal. It is just a transparent corund-like substance. Al203 alone is pretty hard (and easy to make - including gem colored versions) and the mixed oxide-nitride is probably harder.

Other things realizable by R-ing TFA

[Atario (673917)]

• Either someone doesn't know how to make a proper trademark symbol, or else the Air Force has a wierder marketing department that one would imagine ("'ALONtm'? Alontum? With odd capitalization? Wha? Is this like that whole Sony Wega/Vega nonsense?").
• Ceramic can be transparent
• It's possible for something to be "virtually scratch resistant" -- practically, but not technically, offering some resistance to being scratched

Re:transparent oxide-nitride, not a metal

[AuMatar (183847)]

I hope not, then I'd have to start wearing pants!

soda

[Cave_Monster (918103)]

Does anyone remember being told when they were a child, not to leave your can of drink open while outside for fear of a wasp/bee getting inside and consequently a painful next sip?

Perhaps with this technology we can have see-through cans and this will no longer be a problem :)

iPod Nano screen

[jabuzz (182671)]

Sound just what Apple need to make some scratch resistant screens for the iPod Nano :)

IPOD nano needs this stuff

[blackomegax (807080)]

seriously. give the nano a nice coat of this and i think apple's little scratching post will turn into something nice and...well...scratchless

Beanie

[svvampy (576225)]

Does this mean that I can get a new beanie that will protect me from the mind-controlling probes of the government, but not make me look more like a freak?

I don't think that'll catch on.

Humvee Windshields

[deathcow (455995)]

IIRC the windshield of a Humveee is about 72" x 23"... thats 1656 square inches. The article quotes $10 - $15 a sq. inch, so the windshield would be worth $16,560 to $24,840.... I guess they wont be protecting fleets of vehicles with them?

Re:Humvee Windshields

[hidispenser (867480)]

Humvees normally cost the military about $125,000 each. Installing Level I (the highest) armor costs an additional $125,000. http://www.reflector.com/news/content/shared/news/ world/stories/08/11TROOPS_ARMOR.html/ [reflector.com] The article in the link states that the military's goal is to get every Humvee in the fleet to that state of armor. So $16,560 to $24,840 is therefore reasonable for an entire fleet to have.

Re:Humvee Windshields

[Kaenneth (82978)]

Cheaper than training a replacement soldier.

no doubt patented already...

[by Anonymous Coward]

The Air Force Research Laboratory's materials and manufacturing directorate is testing aluminum oxynitride -- ALONtm

And look.. the trademark is built right in as well!

Ooooh.

[DrEldarion (114072)]

What'll be really nice is when prices get down to be viable for use in consumer-grade products. Say goodbye to broken windows from baseballs, cracked screens on dropped iPods, chipped windshields from rocks, and all sorts of other fun uses.

It should open up some cool architectural possibilities as well.

Re:Ooooh.

[MavEtJu (241979)]

Say goodbye to broken windows from baseballs,

And say hello to the fire from which you can't escape from because the "glass" is unbreakable.

Every advantage has its disadvantage!

Re:Ooooh. -- wrong

[mr_z_beeblebrox (591077)]

You're at the 58th floor of a building.
There is a fire. You can't use the stairs or elevators.
A)You break the glass, jump out and fall to your death.
B)You don't break the glass and suffocated because of the smoke.

Either way, you're toast.

Wrong...
A) You're jam
B) You're toast

The difference isn't subtle.

Re:Ooooh.

[Julian Morrison (5575)]

Yeuch. You disgust me! How brainwashed and nihilistic does a human have to be, to strap a gun pointing to their head with a dangling tag saying "for police use"? Or, how utterly sick, to insist others do so?

I do not view the government as a thing with the legitimate right to kill me. If that stymies their plans, fuck 'em. I'll take all the armor I can get!

Sapphire

[obender (546976)]

Sapphire which is basically a crystal of aluminium oxide has been synthetised almost 100 years ago and is commonly used nowadays. Some non-scratch watches use that instead of glass.

Transparent Tin Foil Hats

[wangotango (711037)]

How will the rest of the world recognize us if our tinfoils hats are transparent?

nearly, but not quite...

[williamhb (758070)]

Unfortunately, from the article it seems ALONtm is noted for it's high compressive strength, whereas to build the sides of a whale-sized bath you need high tensile strength. Unless of course it's a particularly aggressive whale and keeps shooting armour-piercing rounds at the side of the bath, but then the bigger question would be "how did it pull the trigger"?

Pictures

[pev (2186)]

Google finds some pics as expected (Sorry, PDF) :
    http://www.surmet.com/docs/Processing_ALON.pdf [surmet.com]

I'm not 100% certain if they're genuine or mock ups though...

~Pev

M-44 sniper rifle?

[Yonder Way (603108)]

"In a June 2004demonstration, an ALONtm test pieces held up to both a .30 caliber Russian M-44 sniper rifle [...]"

Never trust a journalist to get gun facts straight.

The M44 is a carbine version of the Mosin-Nagant [wikipedia.org], very short, easy to carry, but with nothing better than iron sights. It is about as far from a "sniper rifle" as anything you can see.

It has the coolest integral bayonet, though.

On the upside, the M-44 uses the same cartridge as the current Romanian "sniper" rifle, the PSL [wikipedia.org]. The M44 has a short barrel so a steel-cored 7.62x54R [wikipedia.org] projectile won't reach the same sort of velocities as it would out of a PSL rifle but it should be a pretty effective test against the sort of "armor piercing" light arms that any terrorist not carrying an RPG [wikipedia.org] would be likely to have handy.

Refractive index?

[wowbagger (69688)]

I wonder what the refractive index of this material is? For those of us who look through tank windshield all day (figuratively speaking), if this material can be reduced in price and has a refractive index significantly greater than 1.66, then it would make our lenses much thinner, as well as being much more scratch resistant than polycarbonate.

Given that sapphire has a refractive index over 1.75, this *could* be a great breakthrough - if Big Green starts to consume large quantities of this, then the amortized NRE will be greatly reduced.

Sapphire is transparent Aluminum

[Chuck_McDevitt (665265)]

Transparent Aliminum has been around for all our lifetimes: Sapphire = Aluminum Oxide. My watch has a sapphire crystal... Yours might too.

Re:virtually scratch resistant?

[Viol8 (599362)]

It means it'll resists anything except a bunch of bored teenage
scratch-taggers armed with screwdrivers at 3am on a sunday morning.

Re:Super Polish

[AGMW (594303)]

Double the strength by polishing?

This isn't that strange, and certainly here on SlashDot I'd expect the readership to be well aware how things can get harder if they are rubbed the right way.

Re:Super Polish

[TeknoHog (164938)]

Actually, strength from polishing is a pretty basic idea in material science. It comes down to the fact that materials break due to initial cracks that grow bigger under stress. If the cracks are initially larger, the material is more fragile.

For example, a glass bottle can be broken by putting a little sand into it and shaking vigorously. It's mainly the scraping action, not the weight of the sand, that causes the glass to break.

Re:Super Polish

[iq in binary (305246)]

Polishing (like case hardening) belongs to a normal metallic property called work hardening. You work a metal it will become harder (but normally also more brittle). In fact it is rarer to have a metal that won't work harden than not. Time to go back to metal shop!!

Go back? Ok, I'm in one every day.

While you're right about metals work hardening, you're wrong about how often it happens. Quite frankly, it doesn't unless you're either extremely stupid or even more so insane. Even soft magnetics like Cast Iron don't work harden until extremely high temperatures are reached. Something to the tune of 650-1100F, depending on the hardness rating you wish to achieve. If you're reaching temperatures that high before the part is finished, well, you're either cutting it off at the foundry or you're about to be fired. The methods used to actually harden materials in a noticeable fashion are specifically designed to superheat the part. Magnetics such as steel and any iron based material will be heated until red, blue or white hot to achieve hardening. This process is called annealing. Other metals are generally coated with a harder metal, not more than a thousand of an inch or two in thickness; this generally achieves the same affect.

Polishing however, is not generally meant to harden, and rarely does. When a part or surface is polished, part of that surface is actually worn away while polish is deposited. This is the only way to achieve mirror finish, if the part has been turned or faced the surface will have markings on it from the tools used to cut it. Polishing is the process of actually wearing away material to relieve the markings, and depositing polish to increase shine. People should note that the more reflective a metal surface is, the finer the finish. Mirror finish generally denotes a "256 dp finish", required often by aerospace or military applications. The dumbass of a parent knows nothing of what he's talking about, and needs himself to open up a machinist's handbook.

Re:How's it pronounced?

[Tidal Flame (658452)]

Either, really. It can be pronounced and spelled either aluminum or aluminium. Typically, Americans and Canadians pronounce and spell it "aluminum." I can't speak for other countries...

Here's the history behind the difference (from the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]):

In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. In 1812 he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root. The same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum, and proposed the name aluminium.

"Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. (Q. Review VIII. 72, 1812. Cited in OED.)"

This had the advantage of conforming to the -ium suffix precedent set by other newly discovered elements of the period: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time: platinum, which had been known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, which was discovered in 1778, and tantalum, which was discovered in 1802, all have spellings ending in -um. For the thirty years following its discovery, both the -um and -ium endings were used interchangeably in the scientific literature.

Curiously, the United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However Charles Martin Hall selected the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, four years after he had patented the process in 1888. Although this spelling may have been an accident, Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version.

In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications, and American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant.