Using Non-Newtonian Fluids To Fill Potholes 260
sciencehabit writes in with a link about a group of students who have come up with an interesting idea about how to fill potholes. "Non-Newtonian fluids are the stars of high school science demonstrations. In one example, an ooey-gooey batter made from corn starch and water oozes like a liquid when moved slowly. But punch it, or run across a giant puddle of it, and it becomes stiff like a solid. Now, a group of college students has figured out a new use for the strange stuff: filler for potholes."
More Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
The students plan to patent their invention, so they won't divulge their exact formulation,
Exact formulation isn't necessary for this application, as every 7th grade science class learns it by trial and error with a $1.29 box of corn starch.
You can do this in your kitchen in 10 minutes, and the stuff is fun to play with but nobody has found a real good application for it in over a
hundred years.
The trick in keeping the right proportions of water and starch, something that rain and sun will contrive to disrupt. Burst their bag and you have a big mess.
If you stop with a tire one of these, such as at a traffic light, you will sink into it, because given constant pressure, it will flow. It only resists changing pressure, or active kneading, not static weights.
But the beauty here is the rapidity with which these can be thrown down, and they fact that they flow into the pothole, conform to its shape, and thereby resist being ejected by cars.
P.S. It will be a cold day in hell before you find Police patching potholes.
Stopping on it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Neat idea and looks to be working well for cars moving fast.
What about traffic jams though where cars come to a stop on these bags. I'd imagine they'd sing in somewhat and might have trouble moving out of the hole from there.
What happens when a car stands still on them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Traffic isn't always flowing, after all. (And traffic itself acts like a non-Newtonian fluid, as well.)
Re:More Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
A better candidate would be the fire department. Get them off the lazy boys, out of the station and doing some work.
Yeah, it's not like they have to be ready to put out fires or anything.
Wonderful idea ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also : Read the AC posts in any slashdot story and you'll be quick to agree : the world is filled with angry kids.
Re:More Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
If they have something that's really worthwhile, it's a combo system that uses the NNF to fill the hole to a level surface, the a traditional asphalt cap over that. The beauty of the NNF is that it fills the gaps and voids quickly, but still provides strong resistance for shock from cars driving over.
I also assume that they've used something non-biodegradable, corn starch wouldn't make it very long exposed on a highway.
Of course I could RTFA, but what would happen to my Karma if I did that?
Re:Stopping on it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fluid is kept in a bag that is then covered by a black cloth to make it less visible to drivers. Even if they did sink into the pothole while at rest, they could still get out easily, and the bag would simply flow back into its original shape after a few seconds. The only hazard or concern I see there is if the next car drives over it before it flows back to being flat, in which case they may get a bit of a bump, but still no worse than the original pothole itself.
Seems inferior to the current solution. (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with this is that it won't last. You see they put a cover over it. Why is that? Because goop would get stuck to the tires and that would erode the "fluid" away. So they have to put a cover over it. And the cover might move, or fluid might evaporate or god knows what else.
Consider the current solutions of putting sand in the pothole which works for a little while until the sand is eroded away. You could put a little mat over the sand just like they did in for the fluid to get the same result at a cheaper price. And of course, the real solution is to just fill the god damn pot hole in with some asphalt. THIS is why pot holes are so annoying. It's not because they're hard to fix. It's because they're stupid easy to fix and they're not because the transit authority is lazy.
We could say they're underpaid or underfunded or it's hard to keep track of where the problems are but there are some problems with that little theory.
1. the transit budgets are more then sufficient to handle the pot holes if they stopped looting the transit funds to build over priced mass transit systems and instead put the money to what it was for in the first place... roads, bridges, etc. If you have something left over after that... after all the pot holes are filled... then you can put what's left into little pet projects. But not a penny from the fund for anything but road maintenance until the roads have been actually maintained.
2. The notion that they can't keep track of all the pot holes would be understandable if it took them a few days to catch a pot hole. However, they often don't address a pot hole for months. That's not a question of not being able to track it. They know it's there. It's in the middle of on of the busiest streets in a city of millions of people. Probably a hundred thousand people in a week see that pot hole at a minimum. So they know it's there.
3. There aren't even that many of them. In a given square mile how many pot holes form in a given week? It only gets out of control when they're left to build up and whole street turns into potholes.
it's crap like that is that makes Americans want SUVs. The urban street is increasing turning into an off road experience between the god damn speed bumps and the god damn potholes. Try this guys... flat. Just try it.
Re:This couldn't happen last week? (Score:5, Insightful)
Use cheaper tires?
inverse problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of allowing people on highways to drive faster w/o damaging their cars, why not deploy them to cause damage to cars that are driving too fast.
Maybe this stuff can be used as a movable speed bumps in school zones and children play zones? If you drive slow enough, no problem. If you run over them too fast, you destroy your car's suspension. People are pointing out that it can be stolen, perhaps this mobility is just what you need for this problem. In the middle of the day (or the weekend), you can just move them away. That seems like this would be much more effective than the radar speed-signs that exist there now and less of a liability and expense for hiring lots of crossing guards. You might also sell this to HOAs that can't convince local fire departments to allow them to put in speed bumps or neighborhood groups that have lots of children playing in their front yards.
Dibs on the patent for this use case. ;^)
Re:More Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
When I worked in a warehouse, you quickly notice everyone's diet getting progressively worse (chips, softdrinks, pre-packaged food, breakfast burgers) whenever we hit a busy time of the year.
Re:Stopping on it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy a car that has tires instead of rubber bands on the wheels you fucking moron.
Re:More Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
This site puts it well http://www.davis-stirling.com/MainIndex/Asphalt/tabid/3350/Default.aspx [davis-stirling.com]. Potholes simply reflect cheap ass government focusing taxpayers dollars on kickbacks rather than on routine road maintenance. When you have pot holes, that represent either an unusual problem (flooding, water main burst etc.) or quite simply a break down in the proper duties of local government and or state government.
If you have pot holes in a major city and you ain't firing your elected representatives and replacing them with new representatives than you're bloody idiots and, yes according to Google street view US infrastructure roads and footpaths largely looks like shit.