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Science

On The Nature Of Slime: Molecular Engineering 35

Posted by timothy from the there's-some-slime-in-my-apartment dept.
Effugas writes: "New Scientist is running a surprisingly readable series about the nature of slime made from polymer chains. Far more fascinating set of articles than I would have expected; for all the theoretical talk of grey goo and nanotech robotics, chemists really are the ones doing the largest scale engineering on the smallest of scales. I especially enjoyed the article about the hagfish, which can when under duress turn the five gallons of water around it into utterly impenetrable sludge -- instantaneously." The article also has a great do-it-yerself recipe for some bouncy homemade slime.
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On The Nature Of Slime: Molecular Engineering More

On The Nature Of Slime: Molecular Engineering

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  • Could you use instant slime deployment to detect subs? My intuition is that a propeller which was whisper-quiet at a given speed in ordinary water would cavitate in a much more viscous gel, creating noise which would give away the sub's position. Want to know if someone's hiding in your prop-wash? Fire a "slime torpedo" from your aft tubes. Or, use a static emplacement to create a "wall-o-slime" across the mouth of a harbor to detect incoming subs.

    Of course, I'm a computer scientist, not a fluid dynamicist (Damnit, Jim!), so I may in fact be completely wrong about this.
  • OH god, i've been programming all night long. I can't think strait. All I can think while typing this is how to getc and ungetc all these characters and how to write them to a file.

    Now is probably *not* a good time, but if you're having to deal with complex input, you might want to consider lex(1) and yacc(1), or their free and superior equivalents flex and bison.

  • article is incomplete (Score:3)

    by scrytch ( 9198 ) <chuck@myrealbox.com> on Saturday October 21, 2000 @05:15AM (#687613)
    What poor and haphazard research ... an article about slime and there's no mention of the RIAA, the American Bar Association, or the Direct Marketing Association?
  • Scientific American did a fascinating and revolting article on the hagfish (aka: slime eels)... ever wonder what happens to whales when they die? The slime eel happens... ickkkk!!

    Weirdly, the only thing that shows up when you search for 'hagfish' the results that showed up prominently featured the name "Caroline Meinel". Odd, that.

    The article appears not to be online (boo!) but here's a summary: http://www.sciam.com/1998/1098issue/1098quicksumma ry.html [sciam.com]

  • If I remember correctly, in Martin Cruz Smith's book, Polar Star, there is a scene where they autopsy a body recovered from the ocean, and discover one or more hagfish inside the corpse, chowing down on the internal organs. The hagfish will enter a corpse through any available orifice and feed on the internal organs. It reminded me of the creature in the movie Alien.
  • Where I live there is an aquarium not far away. They have a row of tanks with things in that you can touch (starfish, sea urchins, etc.). For some reason, they keep the hagfish in a tank on the end of the row, with a cover on. Ugly brute - and imagine, (given it's placement) the sort of accident that could happen if they left the cover off ;-). (Actually, the staff said a I could touch it if I really wanted to - I declined).

    Also, with the strands in the slime being somewhat silk-like, image it being used as a replacement for silk? "No, it's not silk you are wearing, it's ... um ... ahh ... nevermind"
  • Even if they aren't able to completely imitate the hagfish, a technology like this might be able to be used in submarine warfare.

    Nah. While this stuff does have amazing viscosifying powers, it doesn't have any real mechanical strength. A sub's propellers would curn it to shreds in no time.

  • Gack! (Score:3)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @04:42AM (#687618)
    The company I used to work for was the manufacturer of Gack! for Mattel. This stuff is made from guar, a natural polymer derived from a plant grown mostly in India using pretty much the same recipie as that for PVA slime outlined in the New Scientist article.

    Many of these natural polymeric thickeners are used in food to improve the way it feels in your mouth. Prime places are in salad dressings, ice cream, doughnut fillings, etc.

    Calling this stuff nanotechnology is a bit of a misnomer, though. The chemical structures of these most of these polymers are quite random, it is only on a statistical basis that you control their bulk properties. In nanotechnology you are trying to control the structure at a much deeper level.

    Other areas of chemistry, such as self-assembly of surfactant films are where the real work that is forwarding nanotechnology is being done.

  • something the article should mention. before you go out and start buying borax and playing with it know this:

    borax is a diarrhetic

    the concentrations used to make this slime can leave a residue on your hand strong enough to give you the green apple spaltters for a day or so. so be careful.

    john
  • the hagfish, which can when under duress turn the five gallons of water around it into utterly impenetrable sludge

    Until recently, I worked in a shop where many of the coders could, under stress, turn megabytes of carefully crafted functional and technical specs into an undocumented morass of disfunctional code.

    Not hackers but haggers?

  • Pictures of hagfish slime! (Score:3)

    by psychonaut ( 65759 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @05:10AM (#687621)

    If anyone is interested in reading more about hagfish and seeing pictures of their slimy defence mechanism, check out this page: http://oceanlink.island.net/oinfo/hagfish/hagfish. html [island.net]


    Regards,

  • Funny troll nonetheless.
  • Also, with the strands in the slime being somewhat silk-like, image it being used as a replacement for silk? "No, it's not silk you are wearing, it's ... um ... ahh ... nevermind"
    just the same, though: "Why yes, that's silk you're wearing. Silk is excreted by these little crawly worms, who are then boiled alive to retrieve it.... ahh... um... nevermind"

    also just like "Why yes, that's honey, bees regurgitate it from partially digested... ahh... umm... nevermind".

    if you're fine with wearing silk, which can also be describe as caterpillar excretia, why would you have any objections to wearing some wonderful new material derived from the threads a hagfish expels with it's mucus?

  • there has been some very interesting work in the past few years with regard to polymer gels which change physical properties drastically in response to small changes in environmental conditions such as temperature, ph, light, electrical/magnetic fields, solvents, and others.

    in some cases, these changes may be a thousand fold increase in volume, or a change in viscosity from fluid to near solid.

    links:
    http://pubs.acs.org/hotart cl/ cenear/970609/gels.html [acs.org]
    http://web.mit.edu/physics/tanaka/ [mit.edu]
  • I did a little paper on hagfish back in highschool, and they're really rather interesting animals, if not a little ugly. They've got multiple hearts that all beat in seperate rhythm, they've got the whole slime thing and the ability to tie themselves in a knot to remove the slime, and to escape from and confuse predators. They can change their gender from season to season to suit the conditions. Despite a relatively low birth rate, they exist in significant numbers, so they must be doing a good job at keeping themselves alive. All in all a pretty efficient species. Fossil records show that they've existed in pretty much their present form for quite some time, so they can't be too dumb for tying themselves in knots.
  • This is pretty cool actually. I have to agree about the part with the hagfish. I wish I could do that. Keep my boss away from me!
  • ... there were a moderation option of "Score +/1 0 -- Icky!"

    I thought the idea of hagfish in corpses was gross enough, but on multi-ton corpses it pretty much gives me the willies.

    (Excuse me while I shiver with disgust and revulsion.)

    simon

  • Haiku (Score:4)

    by 575 ( 195442 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @12:21AM (#687629) Journal
    Welcome to Slashdot
    News for nerds: Stuff that matters,
    Recipes for snot!
  • Even if they aren't able to completely imitate the hagfish, a technology like this might be able to be used in submarine warfare. It'd have to be mighty powerful stuff and in greater quantities to trap incoming torpedoes, or clog the screws (propellers) of an enemy submarine, but it has possibility. Of course, it wouldn't be a primary weapon, but they could release a fence of the mixture if need-be. However, they'd need to have a solution to dissolve the stuff, should they become trapped in their own net.
  • They already have countermeasures in which they plot a solution. I think it's magnesium that splashes around in front of the incoming torp. It wouldn't be difficult assumedly to change what's coming out of the countermeasure device.
  • Either very cool or extremely dumb, I haven't decided.

    the nerd's nerdy dilemma....:-)

  • A chem stockroom manager and I were playing around with this stuff, using PVA and Borax solutions, however it didn't last long. The net of molecules (which traps the water molecules) would eventually break down, due to impurities from hands, etc. We found adding a little glycerin would help it hold up longer. I still have a jar of it from 5 years ago, which is still good!

    Another example, I discovered entirely by accident in elementary school, was to combine powdered borax soap and Elmer's glue. It made a nice slime, which dried out pretty fast, but could make rubber-like balls. I learned from the stockroom manager that this was another example of the PVA & Borax combo. Too bad I didn't Patent it! (ha!)


    --
    Chief Frog Inspector

  • [...] the hagfish, which can when under duress turn the five gallons of water around it into utterly impenetrable sludge -- instantaneously."

    Is this similar to the way an MPAA or a RIAA lobbyist can when under Congress, turn the brains of the five legislators around it into utterly impenetrable sludge -- instantaneously?

  • I suggest not leaving them in the fridge if you wanna have fun... on a related note, check out the stinkymeat project [thespark.com]

    ------
    http://207.168.234.207/
    Vinnland - A country of True Freedom.

  • Mmmm (Score:2)

    by zephc ( 225327 )
    unprocessed fish sticks

    ------
    http://207.168.234.207/
    Vinnland - A country of True Freedom.

  • Easier Recipes and Fun stuff (Score:3)

    by LauraLolly ( 229637 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @05:14AM (#687637)
    Although glue and borax make good bouncy slime, borax and Polyvinyl Alcohol make even better [acs.org] slime. The best consumer product containing polyvinlyl alcohol is laundry blueing - Mrs. Smith's bluing works great in the states.
    Other Excellent [pdq.net] recipes for slime exist and are not hard to find.
    • Glue and PVA also work well.
    • Another fun slime is made from 5 parts cornstarch to 1-2 parts water, by volume. This one is very slimy, but becomes rigid under abrupt pressure.
    • From a chemistry teacher's standpoint, even hard-wheat flour (bread flour) is great stuff. Take bread flour, add water, and stir. Watch the lovely gluten threads intermingle as the starch becomes slimy. Add more water for more slime, or keep stirring for more gluten and bounce.

    There have been some cool articles on polymers [sciencenews.org] and slimes at Science News [sciencenews.org] and ACS [acs.org], but that hagfish was news to me. Oooooh!

  • When I first read the title I thought it was going to be an article about Gore and how he had Rolling Stone magasine airbrush his 'package'. ;P

    Regards
  • I'm doing a similar experiment in my fridge. I'm trying to find out which will evolve the fastest, the meatloaf, or the milk. See, i think the milk has the advantage because it has a pre-set date on its side. But the meatloaf could catch up i think. The meatloaf is bigger, therefore more dominant.

    OH god, i've been programming all night long. I can't think strait. All I can think while typing this is how to getc and ungetc all these characters and how to write them to a file.


  • Troll??? (ducks as comment flies way over my head)

    Elgon

  • Yep, unfortunately the hagfish are not immune to the slime themselves so they tie themselves in a knot which they then slide along their body to scrape it off. Either very cool or extremely dumb, I haven't decided.

    The slime itself has loads of uses from helping to mop up chemical spills to (allegedly) tank armour(?!), via wallpaper paste probably.

    Elgon
  • This Gooey story seems more to the taste of Goo loving teenagers, specialy that recipe for cool goo. We could perhaps forward this article to a teen site.
  • Now correct me if i am wrong- I haven't seen this week's copy of NS, but there was certainly a lengthly article on slime in one a good few weeks ago. Are we referring to that one, or is there a new article in this week's New Scientist too, in which case I really do think they should find more things to talk about between repeating articles. Could anyone please tell me if this is the article from a while back, or a new one on the same area? Sorry if I'm talking nonsense, just the article rings bells for me...
  • Who ya gunna call ?
  • Ahh, now I know why all weird aliens and other creep are so slimy.
    They just want the boss to stay away...right?


    Every time I try to commit recursive suicide, my system hangs.

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