{"id":9304,"date":"2011-05-13T08:24:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T12:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9304"},"modified":"2011-05-13T09:30:49","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T13:30:49","slug":"would-you-fly-in-a-glass-airplane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/05\/13\/would-you-fly-in-a-glass-airplane\/","title":{"rendered":"Would you fly in a glass airplane?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Professor William Johnson<\/a> is successful with the new process, you may see lots of structural glass in use:<\/p>\n

\n

A new breakthrough in superspeed pulse mould technology will allow aeroplanes, mobile phone casings and suchlike to be made out of a miraculous type of glass which is as tough as metal, according to the inventors of the new process.<\/p>\n

So-called “metallic glass” has been well known since 1960 and has been in industrial production since the 1990s. It is a metal alloy, but one with the disordered structure of glass — not formed into crystals the way most metals are.<\/p>\n

The crystalline structure of metal is a disadvantage, making it weak. Unfortunately, ordinary glasses — while strong and rigid — generally crack and shatter easily. What’s wanted is a metallic glass, made of metal but with a non-crystalline structure like window glass. This won’t crack or fracture, but will be much stronger than an equivalent object made of ordinary metal.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

“We uniformly heat the glass at least a thousand times faster than anyone has before,” says William Johnson, engineering prof at Caltech.<\/p>\n

Using this method the metalglass is heated up, moulded and cooled to solid again before crystals have any chance to form: the new part is still metalglass, not rubbishy regular metal.<\/p>\n

“We end up with inexpensive, high-performance, precision parts made in the same way plastic parts are made — but made of a metal that’s 20 times stronger and stiffer than plastic,” boasts Johnson.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Professor William Johnson is successful with the new process, you may see lots of structural glass in use: A new breakthrough in superspeed pulse mould technology will allow aeroplanes, mobile phone casings and suchlike to be made out of a miraculous type of glass which is as tough as metal, according to the inventors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,15],"tags":[590,174],"class_list":["post-9304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-technology","tag-engineering","tag-innovation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2q4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9306,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304\/revisions\/9306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}