Aerogel: The World’s Lightest Super Material

Posted on June 22nd, 2016 by Christina Valimaki in New Materials & Applications

In the late 1920s Dr Samuel Kistler made a bet with his colleague that gel’s defining characteristic was its structure, not its liquid properties. Despite a number of failed attempts to remove the liquid from gel and maintain its properties, Kistler eventually succeeded.

It’s hard to believe that a simple bet could result in the creation of aerogel. A substance that has been used by NASA to collect space dust and is something that is used in your everyday household products.

In this article, you will learn about:

• The process that made it possible to remove liquid from a gel
• Which properties make aerogel unique
• How aerogel is used in everyday products and far, far beyond

Do you have an Alpha Moment to share? Please let us know in the comments or via a tweet using #AlphaMoment

• Interested in more Alpha Moments?
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  • Discover how a team of DuPont scientists, polymerized chloroprene, clearing the path for neoprene to become the go-to rubber substitute

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All opinions shared in this post are the author’s own.

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Christina Valimaki

http://www.elsevier.com

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