A finger rubbed in superhydrophobic aerogels and submerged in water takes on a decidedly T-1000-esque appearance. And a droplet of water on a piece of paper treated with the same substance behaves more like a drop of mercury on a piece of glass. Definitely worth a click and a few eyeball-seconds.
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The folks at Aerogel.org are serious about it: The “Make” section of their exhaustive “open source aerogel” site will teach you how to make high-quality monolithic aerogel the way the pros do it, from building your our own supercritical drying apparatus (“manuclave” is their neologism), to mixing up the wet ingredients, to actually performing the […]
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Aerogels are fascinating materials, with lots of interesting and, frankly, amazing properties, but they are not easy to make. These days, industrial manufacture with an eye towards commercial applications, primarily as thermal insulators, is bringing the price down some, at least for granules, but larger pieces still cost around $50 US per cubic inch. Ben Krasnow, impressively, has made his own…
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