*don’t try that at home, kids…..

D3O is a fascinating new material that has been developed as a flexible body armour. This might sound like a contradiction in terms, but the material makes use of an interesting property of “shear-thickening” or “dilatant” fluids. These are fluids that behave like a normal fluid when at rest but become hard when manipulated. Silly Putty is another example of a dilatant fluid.

What the people behind D3O have done is produce a dilatant fluid that has “cross-linking” additives that allow the material to hold it’s shape. This means that a very soft and flexible piece of body armour can be produced that becomes hard enough under impact to let you do this…



This is an excellent example of scientists and engineers working together to find ingenious solutions to problems. For more information and videos about D3O, visit the IET Faraday website!

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Yes, I know everyone is sick of hearing about the LHC so I’ll keep it brief… but I couldn’t let it pass without commenting on the comedy that is mass media hype.

The LHC has been cooling down to operating temperatures for weeks and the first particle collisions aren’t due to occur for weeks yet.  Indeed, collisions at energies higher than those already carried out elsewhere won’t take place until next year.

So why the sudden media interest?  I don’t know the answer to that (maybe someone can fill me in) but for whatever reason the commissioning step accomplished today, that is, the first beam travelling around the whole ring, seems to have been accepted as being the “day of reckoning/doom”, depending on the restraint of the particular news outlet.  BBC Breakfast had a reporter on the scene eagerly awaiting this exciting moment… and was greeted by a mild ripple of applause around the room from those watching the monitors and an exasperated CERN scientist trying to explain that today’s event was a bit of a non-event.  Watching the reporter trying to big up the “events” unfolding was mighty funny.

I wonder if the media will return when the real milestones are passed, i.e. first collisions and first higher energy collisions, or if they will lose interest in the story now that the world hasn’t ended

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Picture the scene. You’re a teenage schoolboy, you come bounding out of school after another hard day slaving over a hot pen. You think, “I think I’ll hurdle the barrier on to the main road, what could possibly go wrong?”

This must have stung a bit.

What surprises me most about this is the total lack of response from any of the other schoolchildren! They just wander around like no-one is lying in the road… the first person to show any urgency is someone who comes running from the other side of the road.

Apparently he recovered from his injuries and maybe he’ll actually use the crossing next time…

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