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Science Technology

Amorphous Steel 110

Posted by timothy from the it's-tasty-too dept.
pfdietz writes "Researchers at Oak Ridge have achieved a holy grail of materials science: they have figured out how to produce amorphous (glassy) steel. The material is reported to be twice as hard and have twice the tensile strength of the strongest ultra-high tensile strength steel alloy."
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Amorphous Steel More

Amorphous Steel

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  • Transparent steel-w00t! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @09:22AM (#9506123)
    Somebody make a theme for Linux with it before Apple patents it and starts sending DMCA threats!!!

    Posting anonymously to protect my karma from Apple zealots.

  • ...when they build themselves with this stuff?!?

  • How Long Will It Be ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tilleyrw ( 56427 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @09:31AM (#9506226)

    before the nanotechnologists are able to reproduce this material an the atomic scale and essentially "grow" amorphous-steel items?

    I want my +5 Broadsword of Nerdly Might!

  • One step away... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonj@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @09:33AM (#9506235) Homepage Journal
    Now that amorphous steel is a reality, we are only one step away from transparent aluminum.
    • Whew! I read that as transparent tin.

    • Thank you ... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 )
      For re-affirming my faith in Slashdot. I was thinking the exact same thing. =)

      However, all kidding aside ....

      By 'glassy', can anyone shed light on this actually infers? I'm thinking more to do with material versus optical properties. (Yes, I R'd TFA, and they certainly don't say anything about optical properties.)
      • If it refers to optical properties, I imagine this could be the next bullet-proof glass for when you really need to be protected. Could make for some excellent blast shields, a truely bullet-proof helmet w/ face shield, and certainly as windows in the Presidents limo.

      • Re:Thank you ... (Score:4, Informative)

        by rco3 ( 198978 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:01AM (#9514986) Homepage
        "glassy", as in "amorphous", as in "non-crystalline". Does NOT mean transparent like window glass. Think obsidian - it's black (or green), opaque, and shatters in totally random directions. That's because it has no crystalline structure and thus no lines or planes of fracture.
        This is non-crystalline steel. It's not transparent aluminum - but then, nothing is.
        • And why is this a "Good Thing" for steel?

          • Beats me. Apparently the metallurgists say that amorphous steel is stronger. [ shrug ] Sounds good to me.

            However, the claim about the amorphous steel being "twice as strong and hard" smells funny to me... twice as hard? On what sort of scale? Isn't steel already about 2/3 as hard as diamond anyway? Does that mean that amorphous steel is 4/3 as hard as diamond? How would they measure that?

            Enquiring minds want to know!

  • Somebody explain this to me? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @09:35AM (#9506269) Journal
    From the linked article: Steel, an alloy of mostly iron atoms with varying amounts of carbon and other elements, is ordinarily a crystal, with an internal structure consisting of neat rows of atoms. If produced quickly from a liquid phase, however, a disordered solid can result.

    Ok, somebody who understands materials science explain this to me, please: is the amorphous steel's hardness and strength greater because the non-amorphous, crystalline steel breaks easily along a row of atoms, as if along a perforation, while the amorphous steel, lacking such an orderly structure, lacks long runs of bonds along which breaks can be easily made?

    Pictorially, is it like this?
    Fe-Fe-Fe-Fe regular, non-amorphous steel
    |..|..|..| <--- break along this line
    Fe-Fe-Fe-Fe

    Fe-..-Fe-.-Fe amorphous steel
    |.\-Fe-Fe/.| <--- no natural breaking line
    Fe-Fe-Fe..-Fe

    • Re:Somebody explain this to me? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by iwadasn ( 742362 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @09:52AM (#9506463)
      That should be more or less correct. If it's like other amorphous things though it should be harder, right up until you reach the point of catastrophic failure where it will shatter.

      • Re:Somebody explain this to me? (Score:5, Informative)

        by mprinkey ( 1434 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:34AM (#9506984)
        In any crystal, there are potential imperfection. The MatSci term for them is dislocations. These are holes in the crystal lattice. These holes can move around (think of piles of marbles). In single crystals, these dislocations lead to stress risers at the hole (try tearing a sheet of paper by just pulling at opposite ends...then tear a small notch in the middle of one edge and try again). So these dislocations can move around and basically "unzip" the whole crystal. The failure mode leads to "cleaving" planes along different directions in the crystal and makes the bulk strength much lower.

        High strength alloys generally try to put extra chemicals in the metal mixture to block the movements of the dislocations. Also, you tend to "quench" the formed metal so that the crystals that it forms (called "grains") are small. Smaller grains usually means stronger metals because they can only "unzip" a short distance before they hit a different grain with a different orientation.

        These guys at ORNL have basically taken the tiny grain idea to the ultimate limit. Each grain basically only has one or a few atoms in it. FYI, IAA Mech. Engineeer.

        • I've understood the basics for some time, but the way you put it has to be the most clear description of exactly why it works that I've seen.

          Now it makes sense why adding a metal as soft as zinc to aluminum gives you "aircraft grade" (7000 series) alumimum, which is twice the shear and tensile strength of "marine grade" (6000 series) aluminum, which contains the much stronger magnesium instead.

          • 6061 T6 is aircraft grade aluminum, but as long as it's rated for the part it's manufactured for, I don't think it matters what kind of grade it is.

            • Re:Thank you very much! (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Kevin Burtch ( 13372 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @03:54PM (#9511106)

              I used to work in a machine-shop, both in design and in purchasing (for several years).

              Reynolds and many others consider 6061 and 6063 to be marine-grade.

              They also consider 7075 to be aircraft grade... twice the shear and tensile strength of 6061, but also twice as expensive (cost/lb).

              The T-rating ("-T6") is a hardening that it receives after forming, irrelevant to the alloy.

              As far as what is spec-ed out, I agree... you should be able to use 6k series in an airplane, for example in a coffie-pot-holder.
              Oddly enough, we made a run of those for an airline, and they spec-ed it had to be 7075-T6.
              And people wonder why air-fare is so expensive... bozos are making the decisions.

              The reverse is true too... we made a run of bicycle crank-axles that were spec-ed to be 7075-T9! Hardly an airplane, but those puppies sure were expensive!

    • Re:Somebody explain this to me? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by furry_marmot ( 515771 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @11:41AM (#9507721) Homepage
      There was an article in Discover magazine just a couple of months ago about this very thing. Not sure if it's online, but you can definitely find it at your local library.

      One thing worth noting: While the tensile strength is increased greatly, it is also glass-like in that if you hit it with a baseball bat, it explodes in lots of little shards. It has to do with the lack of a lattice structure keeping it together.

      Another thing I thought was interesting: steel knives sort of shed molecules and become deformed at the knife-edge when you use them, requiring you to sharpen them. Glassy steel knives wouldn't do this. You could literally pour yourself a knife in a mold and have a never-dulling knife -- assuming you don't drop it. :-)

      • Wow, I was about to say this new steel would make a huge advance in bicycle frames --- but never mind that now :-)
        • To avoid the shattering problem, you could use lots of metal fibers in a matrix of something else (say, resin). This would give you the possibility of an injection-molded steel-fiber composite bicycle frame. (Why you'd use steel instead of glass or carbon, I don't know - but it would be possible.)

          I can see the glass issue as a problem for some of the proposed uses, though. To retain its strength it would have to avoid crystallizing; if you used it for beams in a building, you would have to guarantee that a

        • There is no problem with bicycle frames that carbon fiber can't fix. You might have to cover it in something to protect it from sudden, sharp shocks, like a closed-cell foam, and then skin that with something for appearance purposes.
      • In the Discover article, one of the companies attempting to capitalize on amorphous metals is LiquidMetal. The stuff has been used in Head tennis rackets, golf clubs, hinges in cell phones, etc. A friend of mine has tested the head racket and he said you can really feel it return the energy better than other rackets.

        Although the Discover article says that knives can be easily cast (e.g., for surgical purposes, disposable knives can be made much more easily), the metal isn't as hard as hand-made knives.
      • They would not be competing with steel knives but with ceramic ones. Cermainc knives also do not need to be sharpened, however they are no good for prying type actions. I would guess that glassy steel knives would be the same way.

        As for loosing thier edge knives loose it from that however you can remove most of that from a sharpening steel. You loose alot of your edge from hitting the cutting surface, which is the main reason(besides costs) cermaic knifes are used for soft stuff as opposed to dicing an
      • Glassy steel knives wouldn't do this. You could literally pour yourself a knife in a mold and have a never-dulling knife -- assuming you don't drop it. :-)

        My dad has owned a ceramic kitchen knife for about 18 years now. It took a long time, but it's definitely not as sharp now as it was when he got it (in fact it's more like a ceramic letter opener at this point).

        I imagine a glass steel knife would perform similarly, but IANA mechanical engineer.

        • I hadn't made the connection to ceramic knives earlier, but now I do seem to remember rather mixed reviews on ceramic knives. Really sharp and stay that way for a long time, but also really expensive to sharpen, and you have to send them somewhere to get it done. I also hear that, while they're not fragile, they are more brittle than metal and can be broken. I've been curious to try one, but they're also expensive and we don't have any shortage of knives around here.

  • Some metals they might find next (?) (Score:5, Informative)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @09:44AM (#9506380) Homepage
    From this page [sharecom.ca] (mirrored here so they don't get /'ed) ... no mention of Unobtainium! ;-)

    BTW, if you can't get a gmail invite from the poster above, they are giving one away periodically from the bottom of this Google Compute page. [powder2glass.com]

    There are several special metals in the Marvel universe that can have a place in the World of Darkness. These metals are usually very hard; much harder than mere steel, and they are not very ablative. They are also very rare, in general. One or two of them have special properties.

    Adamantium

    Adamantium is the hardest metal known to man, though it has not been made clear how dense it is. One would suspect that its density is roughly the same as that of normal steel, though a Storyteller can rule that it is as heavy as lead or as light as magnesium. At any rate, it would appear that no force on earth is sufficient to break or bend adamantium when it is at a normal temperature. Wolverine has used his adamantium-coated claws in Arctic climes as well as steamy jungles, so there is no reason to suppose that the metal becomes brittle at low temperatures. Judging from the number of times Wolverine's flesh has been roasted or vaporized right off of his skeleton in the comics, with no visible effect on the metal, we must assume that adamantium has a relatively high melting point. In any case, to be nice to Logan, it also seems likely that it has a fairly high specific heat capacity, at least for a metal. It may or may not be one of the magnetic metals- as seen in X-Men 25- because Magneto has enough raw power to reach down and repel protons in the raw, if he wants to.

    There is a special process that allows adamantium in ionic (salt) form to be bonded to human bones- as in Wolverine's skeleton- or even human skin- as in Cyber's case. This process was developed by a Japanese scientist and villain called Dark Wind, and stolen (or sold) for the benefit of Department H, a branch of the Canadian Ministry of Defense. The following characters have some sort of connection to the metal, or are actually running around wearing it: Wolverine, Cyber, Dark Wind, Apocalypse, the Professor (not Xavier), Ultron, Lady Deathstrike.

    Carbonadium

    Carbonadium is a resilient, unstable metal that is much tougher than steel but more flexible than adamantium. It would seem as though it is a difficult and extremely expensive process to make carbonadium, which is probably an alloy of some kind, since there is apparently only one carbonadium synthesizer in the entire world. Carbonadium, like its more resilient counterpart adamantium, would appear to have a high specific heat capacity and melting point.

    Carbonadium may or may not have one unique property: it may serve to stabilize a life-force vampire's condition, which would keep the mutant from having to drain the life force of others to survive. This may be a simple fact of Omega Red's condition, rather than something general to life-force vampirism.

    Omega Red's tentacles are composed of carbonadium, and it is possible that his skeleton is also laced with the stuff. Other characters with a link to carbonadium include Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick, and John Wraith.

    Omnium

    Omnium is an extremely hard, extremely rigid metal that is likely to be second in resilience only to adamantium. In any case, it would seem that it is even less likely to bend without snapping than that metal. Omnium is not a commonly used or mentioned metal, but it has appeared on rare occasion in Marvel comics.

    There was an acolyte of Magneto that had the power to change either himself or another person into an aware omnium statue. Other characters that have been seen using or testing the metal include Penance and the White

    • Re:Some metals they might find next (?) (Score:5, Funny)

      by blankmange ( 571591 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:14AM (#9506720)
      You forgot terbinium, from Mars, which is mined using essentially slave labor and the resistance leader (Kuato) was murdered several years ago...
    • Here's a metal you might find particularly useful, xmas2003:

      Lithium carbonate [healthatoz.com]

      Remember what the nice doctor said? "Comics are not reality." You don't want to have to go back to the hospital, do you?

      Say it to yourself a few times: "Comics are not reality. Comics are not reality." That's a good boy, we're all friends here, no one's going to hurt you. Just put the comic down and lets go for a walk outside in the fresh air, OK?
    • That's all fine for now. But in a couple hundred years, Mr. Spock will tell the Enterprise crew that Castrodinium is "the hardest metal known to our science". Unfortunately, the Romulan plasma weapon renders it unstable, which allows a Warbird to wipe out several defense outposts along the Federation-Romulan neutral zone. The good news is that Constitution-class photon torpedoes can take out a Warbird without too much fuss.

    • Re:Some metals they might find next (?) (Score:5, Funny)

      by pragma_x ( 644215 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @01:19PM (#9509105) Journal
      Please allow me contribute some missing entries, frequently found in tabletop arenas:

      Unobtainium

      Unobtainium is the preferred material of fantasy weaponsmiths for creating arms and armor capable of great feats otherwise impossible by any other means or craft. Many a spell is also said to be enhanced just by the mere possession of the substance. In the far-flung future, it is used in every sector of industry from composing and fueling spacecraft, anti-gravity devices, matter-teleportation machines, polymorphing robots, slashdot-effect-proof web servers, faster-than-lightspeed engines, time travel, to making the construction of 100m tall walking war machines possible.

      There is even a rumor that a crash-proof version of Windows exists that requires a special CPU made of pure unobtainium.

      Despite its extreme usefulness, there is no known location in the universe where the substance can be mined or produced. Furthermore, there have yet to be any published studies regarding anything about the substance itself; yet there are thousands of studies and papers regarding its many applications.

      Deaminite (n. dee-em'-in-ite)

      Deaminite is typically found in the construction of mundane objects that are, for reasons unexplained, immobile, impossibly heavy, or otherwise indestructible. There are many a legend involving bands of heroes, who's quest came to halt all because of unlockable and unbreakable doors composed of deaminite. Known artifacts composed of deaminite include: the impossibly heavy weapons of the gods, armor worn by 40th level death knights, Jackie Chan's head, The outer hull of the starship Enterprise, and NYC cockroaches.

      Typically encounters with an object made from deaminite result in a loud booming voice, seemingly from nowhere, uttering phrases like "You cannot pick that up", "You cannot do that", "Its too heavy", "No, because I said so", and "You see a grue".

      Ironically, unlike unobtaininum, Deaminite has never actually be obtained for any purpose whatsoever, so its composition and properties are completely unkown.

    • Vibranium

      Vibranium is a special metal with unique properties. When electrical current is passed through it, it begins vibrating erratically.

      Characters seen using or "testing" (for periods of several hours) vibranium include Sybia and Eccentrica Gallumbits.

  • Further reading... (Score:3, Informative)

    by CodeMonkey4Hire ( 773870 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:13AM (#9506716)
    The article was a little thin, so I mosied on down to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. I always get confused when I hear glassy, but it appears to be related to the material structure, not any transparency/translucency of the material.

    Apparently amorphous metals are considered by some scientists to be a type of liquid rather than a solid. Kind of like glass, if you look at an old house you can see that the windows have slowly flowed downward.

    • Re:Further reading... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Coos ( 580883 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:33AM (#9506973)
      Apparently amorphous metals are considered by some scientists to be a type of liquid rather than a solid. Kind of like glass, if you look at an old house you can see that the windows have slowly flowed downward.

      Urban Legend, or at least most of the way to being one. The observed thickness variation is due to the Crown glass process of making glass sheets in that period: it involved spinning out a 5ft diameter disc of glass, thick in the centre and thin at the edges, and cutting the rectangles from that. There are apparently as many panes thicker at the top or the sides as at the bottom, although possibly some glaziers did have a preference for putting 'thick edge down'.

      If glass did flow, extremely ancient (Myr) naturally occuring glasses like obsidian, fulgurites or tektites would have flowed into puddles! (they havent). Or if that doesnt convince you: the tolerances on the optical components of large telescopes are so fine that flow of the glass at the claimed rates would distort the image within days.

      See, for example, "Do Cathedral Glasses Flow?", Am. J. Phys. v66, pp 392-396, May, 1998

      NB. Glass can creep under loading, however - but thats for another thread.

      • Actually glass is a liquid, and yes it does flow. But the time scale is rather long.

        To see the effect in window glass would take many many thousands of years. Not sure about obsidian or what the flow rate would be.

        And yes as you mentioned, the apparent flowing of old glass is for 2 reasons. As you stated it's due to the production method, also the myth has been encouraged by the glass being normally installed with the thicker side down.

        Ward

    • Re:Further reading... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:42AM (#9507060) Journal
      Glass flowing is [phschool.com] a [adelaide.edu.au] myth [glassnotes.com].

      Old glass manufacturing technics were VERY imprecise. You might end up with a pane that had a thicker edge, in which case you would naturally put it on the bottom for balance.

      Or you might end up with fairly uniform edges but have an irregular surface that looked like it was "flowing" but was static. I have picture windows in my house that are about 70 years old that have this "flow" pattern and have had people remark that the liquid must be pooling ... it's simply irregular hand-made glass.

      Even if glass -does- flow (see the "a" link at the beginning), math shows it would take millions of years to complete the process, meaning no glass made by man would yet show visible signs of deterioration.

      And you're right, "glassy" in this case is about the physical structure of the metal, not the light transmitting/absorbing aspects though those are probably mildly affected (I imagine a glassy steel will hold a shiny polish better than a crystal steel).
    • The article was a little thin, so I mosied on down to Wikipedia.

      You can also find an abstract [aip.org] and a PDF [aip.org] of the whole article on the physical review letters site (a few links in from the article Slashdot linked).

      These are letters, so they haven't been through rigorous peer review, but the authors take great pains to cite related work and describe their experiment in excruciating detail, so their results are almost certainly perfectly valid.

      Capsule summary: Adding about 1.5% ytterbium to steel alloys make
    • Glas is not liquid - pitch is...

    • I always get confused when I hear glassy, but it appears to be related to the material structure, not any transparency/translucency of the material.

      Right. "Glassy" is just another word for "amorphous"; that is, noncrystalline. Glassy materials are solids, but they aren't arranged in any sort of pattern. In crystalline materials, the atoms are all lined up nicely in a repeating pattern. In an amorphous, or glassy, material, the atoms are arranged randomly. Window glass is simply amorphous silicon dio

  • Two words... (Score:5, Funny)

    by berck ( 60937 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:15AM (#9506744) Homepage Journal
    TRANSPARENT ALUMINUM!

    "Hello? computer?"

    "Just use the keyboard!"

  • Navy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by corporate trinket ( 558657 )
    This could be good news to the Navy, especially in application to submarines. Using this metal they should be able to achieve the same hull strength with less material. That leaves more room to stuff electronics on the inside. This may also help subs go deeper/stay there longer.
    • Maybe but maybe not. You would still have to weld the stuff. It would next to impossible to cast a hull for a sub. I could be wrong but this stuff seems like it would be hard to weld.

      • You would still have to weld the stuff. It would next to impossible to cast a hull for a sub.

        Grind, plasma-cut or EDM-machine notches in the edges for finger joints and glue them together (brazing will work just as well if you won't get crystallization). Another method would be to plasma-spray more of the same alloy into the cold joint and roll smooth between applications; this way the joint would be composed of the same glass as the bulk plate.

        If the bulk material has low shatter resistance it might no

        • That might work. What about for overhaul? What if you need to replace a steam turbine or such.
          Glueing seems kind of scary. Overall not likley to happen. The Navy is having a hard time getting any new subs much less one with a new tech hull. Since the fall of the USSR subs have a low priority. Heck the have even retired the S-3. Still a nice idea though. How about a carbon fiber hull :)
          • For overhaul, you could melt a thermoplastic glue or just cut through a plasma-welded hull. To close up afterwards you'd just reverse the process. I expect that a plasma-welding process would be quite a bit slower than conventional welding and would therefore be more expensive.

            The Navy is having a hard time getting any new subs much less one with a new tech hull. Since the fall of the USSR subs have a low priority.

            Indeed. Without an enemy armed with ICBMs, SLBMs or a serious navy, submarines don't have

            • The problem is that if we stop building subs we could loss our ability to build them. Just as we can not make a saturn five anymore. The cost to recreate the industral base to build a nuclear sub could be much greater than to keep building subs at a low prodution rate. The problem is if you are building low numbers the cost per sub is going to very high. If that is what happens then it might make sense to build highly inovative subs since going cheap will not save much money.
              • The problem goes deeper than what you describe. There is more than enough money in NASA's budget to recreate the Saturn V, but the budget priorities as set by Congress and the institutional culture are so different from what existed during Apollo that the goal is beyond reach despite being easier to do the second time.

                NASA has spent tens of billions on a series of programs to develop Shuttle replacements, and all of them have been total fiascoes. This is what appears likely to happen to a super-cool submar

                • "Are submarines of any use to fight our current or foreseeable enemies? If not, it makes sense to let them go the way of the battleship."

                  I would say that the potental ASW threat is real. Can you think of a better way to put a commando team "state terrorists" ashore than a sub. Look at North Korea. How about putting ashore bio or chemical agents? The US has a huge amount of cost line. In the 80s drug sugglers used to run across the boarder all the time. That has been pretty well shut down.
                  After WWI people t

                  • I would say that the potental ASW threat is real. Can you think of a better way to put a commando team "state terrorists" ashore than a sub. Look at North Korea. How about putting ashore bio or chemical agents?

                    Could I do this with a WWII-style diesel/electric sub? Probably. Could I do this with a modern version thereof, powered by off-the-shelf fuel cells burning fuel with liquid oxygen and able to stay underwater for a week? Almost certainly. Do I need a modern nuclear hunter-killer sub or SLBM sub for

                    • Subs do not have to surface for Sigint. Well not off of the sub anyway.
                      I can see no problem with fewer subs but loosing the ability to build them I see as short sited.
                      Three SLBMs? Two few by far. The 14 or so that we have now is about the least I would want to have. With three you would have at most two at sea at a time and sometimes only one. Just because right now Russia is not a threat does not mean that they could not become one in the future. I will admit that I feel that India is less of a threat now
    • It's the planes that need this:

      1. landing gear
      2. arrestor hooks
    • Underwater craft have already reached the bottom of the ocean without any need for any "amorphous steel". Mariana trench exploration happened quite a while ago with technology much more primitive.
      • Underwater craft have already reached the bottom of the ocean without any need for any "amorphous steel". Mariana trench exploration happened quite a while ago with technology much more primitive.

        Only specialized research (niche) subs with very limited capabilities "can't go any deeper". Their designs are not applicable to high performance high capability cost effective combat vessels. That said, those research subs are amazing.
      • Sure, vehicles have reached those depths.

        But what about habitats? I'd move to the Mariana Trench Habitat tomorrow, if I could.

        (... long as it had free cable and good gym facilities that is ...)
    • I wonder whether it might also find an application in armored vehicles. To drop out of the back of a C130, a vehicle has to be 17 or 18 metric tonnes, whereas a typical main battle tank presently weighs in at 60 tonnes.

      Uber-steel would make a significant contribution to lightening the load. That way our brave boys can drop out of planes to bring death, er, liberty to the evil-doers - and also avoid getting fragged by said evil-doers' RPG-7s.

    • is there really a need for military submarines now that we're friends with russia? it seems that submarines main purpose was to be a stealth attack platform. with long range missiles on ships and bases on every continent submarines are an expensive to maintain cold war era toy.
      • As long as nuclear missiles exist that are capable of being used against us, the SLBM is the *BEST* offensive/defense we have to deter the enemy. You can find our land based silo's pretty quick, and with planning, put enough land based terror-bombs nearby to render them ineffective. Same with our aircraft based weapons.

        You will *NEVER* find all 15 of our submarines.

  • Discover Magazine [discover.com] ran an interesting article [discover.com] on glassy metals back in their April issue, but to see the full article on-line you have to be a subscriber [discover.com]. However, if you can find someone who has a copy, it's a good read.
  • Yes, but is it TRANSPARENT? I want Transparent steel! I want an invisible jet! and an Invisible Sword! and an Invisible Toaster so I can see the toast get dark As It Happens! (grin)

    The article doesn't mention if it has superior resistance to rust, though. This just talks about the crystal size.

    QUESTION: It would seem to me that an ordered solid crystal, such as ordinary steel or glass, would have superior strength, due to every atom having the maximum number of molecular bonds with its neighbors.

    Why,
    • Metals have different bond types, that is what really makes them a metal. Basically they share all their electrons freely, so they are always "bonded" to the other nereby atoms.

    • Re:Transparent? (Score:3, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      There's two aspects to the "strength" of steel, strength and toughness. Toughness describes the material's ability to withstand shock without permanent deformation, work hardening, et cetera. Strength describes the tensile strength, or how much weight it can hold.

    • Re:Transparent? (Score:3, Funny)

      by dutky ( 20510 )
      justanyone wrote:

      Yes, but is it TRANSPARENT? I want Transparent steel! I want an invisible jet! and an Invisible Sword! and an Invisible Toaster so I can see the toast get dark As It Happens! (grin)


      here [amazon.com] is your "Invisible Toaster"
      • For Gods sake don't buy that toaster...

        I bought this toaster thinking that it was about time somebody brought the art of toasting bread into the 21st century. It looked like a great idea.

        It turns out that this is a dangerous appliance that never should have been released to the public. Don't turn your back on it for a second.

        I've lost track of the number of times I've run out onto our deck with smoke pouring out of this toaster because the bread had burned so badly. I read the directions and have genu

    • Yes, but is it TRANSPARENT? I want Transparent steel! I want an invisible jet!

      You want to be Wonder Woman?
  • Annealing is letting the metal cool slowly, to maximize the crystal alignments and make the steel as soft as possible. Easy to work into shape.

    Hardening. I heat the steel to its decolessant point, where the atoms are moving so fast they can no longer align in a magnetic field (so magnets don't stick), then quickly cool the steel. It is hardened and at the same time becomes more brittle.

    Tempering is then applied, where the hardened steel is warmed gently to various degrees and again quickly cooled to remov
    • You must be from Livermore. Yeah, everybody knows about your great big rivalry with Oak Ridge, but can't you master scientists just get along? All this sour grapes just makes you look like a jerk who can summarize wikipedia articles.

      (Are you sure you spelled "decolessant [google.com]" right? You should write to Google and have them add the word to their index.)

  • While this amorphous steel is quite an achievement (I do not mean to slight this work), amorphous metals have been around since at least the 60's. A commercial example of this is the amorphous metal golf club head [popularmechanics.com], which has been on the market for a number of years.

    No, amorphous metals are not transparent. So even if we could make amorphous aluminum, you could not see through it. If you want to see through aluminum, you must still combine it with with oxygen to form alumina (or sapphire).
  • Should we change that old saying to: 'People who live in amorphous steel houses shouldn't throw stones'?
  • Maybe they can watch Star Trek IV and implement Scotty's specs for creating transparent aluminium....
  • I am curious about the properties of amorphous steal when compared to other high strength materials like titanium. It would seem that the cost to produce this form of steel is high and that is suffer the same problems of associated with other ceramics
  • I have a degree in Geology so forgive me. In volcanic glasses such as obsidian over the course of millions of years start to crystallize in a process called devitrification. IIRC for the most part there are no volcanic glasses that are more than 10 million to 30 million years old. Granted this is a long time, but amorphous steel could devitrify faster than volcanic glass. This could be serious for a building built out of amorphous steel.

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