Liquid Armor
Science bods have invented Liquid Armor
The liquid - called shear thickening fluid is actually a mixture of hard nanoparticles and nonevaporating liquid. It flows normally under low-energy conditions, but when agitated or hit with an impact it stiffens and behaves like a solid. This temporary stiffening occurs less than a millisecond after impact, and is caused by the nanoparticles forming tiny clusters inside the fluid.
It’s pretty cool science, almost getting to the stage where soldiers could go into battle in a tracksuit and a pair of nikes and still be fully protected !
Tags: news, science
June 16th, 2006 at 10:59 am
That’s a bit like custard isn’t it! Called thixotropic I think…
June 16th, 2006 at 11:11 am
Custard is a non-Newtonian fluid, which I suppose would be the principle that the liquid armour works on.
Now if I only had a pool big enough to try walking on custard…
Apparently Jonathan Edwards did a triple jump on custard to demonstrate the effect. I first saw it on Braniac (great series).