One Kilogram Of This New Polymer Material Can Turn A Swimming Pool To Jelly
A Polymer For Turning Swimming Pools To Jelly Like Vonnegut's Ice-Nine, but gelatinous consequences. Left: The polymer structure captured be atomic force microscope. Right: The polymer's helical backbone and tails that connect to other polymer strands. A. ROWAN ET AL / RADBOUD UNIVERSITY OF NIJMEGEN via NatureSo... how can we weaponize this? Dutch researchers have developed a gel-forming polymer so effective that a kilogram of the stuff sprinkled across an Olympic sized swimming pool would turn the entire thing to jelly. At least, that's how they describe the properties of polyisocyanide polymer, which they've just revealed to the world in the journal Nature. Materials scientist Alan Rowan at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands calls it the best gel-forming polymer in the world, "an order of magnitude better than anything else." All you have to do is add a little heat. This is cool on a number of levels. First of...