When I was a small and intensely young person, my parents would drive me down the California coastline to a town called Carmel near Monterrey Bay, where we would hang out on the beach and frolic amongst the slowly rotting kelp and aggressive sea gulls, eat burgers at Flaherty’s Seafood Restaurant (which specializes in seafood, not land food – I was five), and weave in and out of various art galleries until we were tired enough to return to our hotel and fall asleep.

Image courtesy citi-data.com

One time down in Carmel we saw an elephant seal carcass that had washed up on the beach, and on another occasion we passed two wealthy teenage girls furtively snorting cocaine out of a makeup compact as the sun set over the waves.

When I think about Monterrey, I tend to remember those childhood trips or to think about giant kelp and playful otters; coral reefs don’t immediately spring to mind. But Stanford University biomineralization expert Brent Constantz is working to change that with a new demonstration plant in the Bay that works just like a coral reef … but that manufactures cement.

Image courtesy sophiarogge.blogspot.com

Though tiny, “corals are the master builders of the animal kingdom. Powered on plankton and their symbiotic algae, hard corals extract the carbon dissolved in seawater and turn it into their calcium carbonate skeletons” (Guy). These skeletons build up on each other on a massive scale over time, creating rich habitat for diverse sea life that reminds me of what happens when we build cities out of concrete.

Image courtesy Calera.com

Constantz saw the opportunity to learn from nature and developed a coral-inspired cement manufacturing process. Cement manufacturing is a massive source of carbon emissions: in fact, “the cement industry is responsible for 5% of global carbon emissions, with each ton of cement producing a ton of CO2” (Guy). Constantz’s company, Calera, aims to green the production of cement by “capturing flue gases from factories, running them through a saline solution, and using electricity to convert the gases into solids. For 542 million years, corals have been sequestering carbon dissolved in water” (Guy). Calera is looking to reduce the time scale for sequestering carbon dioxide gas that could be affecting our climate.

WU XING:

I have filed this coral-like material under Earth and Water; connect the dots!

Cited:

Earthsky.org “Making Cement the Way Coral Does: Out of Thin Air.” Fastcompany.com Accessed 12/08/11. URL.

Guy, Allison. “Growing Cement like Coral.” NextNature.com 05/12/11. Accessed 12/08/11. URL.

The grass is always greener – except when it doesn’t rain appreciably for three straight months, as was the case this summer where I live in Texas. Here, the grass was golden brown, parched, dessicated and crunchy like a stale sugar cookie or gauze belonging to a dried out ancient Egyptian mummy. As summer wore on, I found myself desperately squinting up at the blazing blue sky, searching in vain for the faintest hint of cloud formation. We were facing the kind of heat that makes standing on black pavement completely unbearable; the asphalt melts rubber shoe soles and causes low level leg hair to spontaneously combust. As I watched the tree leaves bake to brown and tumble end over end to the ground in defeat, I wished more than anything for rain.

Image courtesy http://howlinghooligan.blogspot.com

I imagine that in places like Seattle, or the Netherlands, where Frederik Molenschot and Susanne Happle developed a new water-activated concrete product they call Solid Poetry, people don’t stand around hoping for rain because the odds are good that it’s already falling from the sky. And now that it’s raining again in Texas, I can see many more applications for this innovative, delightful smart material. When dry, Solid Poetry appears dull and chalky – indistinguishable from standard concrete.  But just add water and suddenly hidden decorative floral and leaf patterns appear, lingering only as long as the moisture level at the surface of the concrete remains high.

Images courtesy www.studiomolen.nl

Happle came up with the idea while on a walk, where she observed leaves blow off of wet pavement leaving an inverted shadow image of lighter concrete behind. She writes:

“Whenever the weather changes the landscape transforms; the light becomes different and the whole atmosphere changes. All materials seem to alter. In my project I explore the possibilities for hidden design appearing as the environment changes. I applied techniques to enduring and solid materials as glass and concrete, so that natural processes like differences in temperature causing condense reveal patterns on windows. Rain uncovers decoration on a city square. The possible applications of solid poetry are various: either at home in the bathroom, in the garden, in saunas and dance clubs, where the humidity is high or public spaces like bus stops or pavements. All forms of solid poetry have in common that they change the whole setting; they are surprising and have a life of their own.”

If you’re like me, now that you’ve heard about Solid Poetry you’ll spend more than a few minutes doodling custom patterns for use in a dream bathroom.  But while custom and cast-in place patterns are possible with the system, the prefab repeating modules are what allows Solid Poetry to scale as a mass-produced, store-ready proposition ripe for commercial distribution. To learn more, treat yourself to this short video:

WU XING:

I am filing Solid Poetry under earth because it’s concrete and water because that’s the reason the concrete goes all magic and mystical.

Cited:

“Beautiful Concrete by Solid Poetry” Ronamag. 11/08/11. Accessed 11/29/11. URL.

Things are heavy right now, man. People are fighting wars, Wall Street is occupied, a large percentage of the workforce can’t find jobs, airport security procedures intensify in complexity by the minute, the rainforest is shrinking as I type … and that’s just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. So if you’re already feeling like Atlas with the weight of the world on your shoulders, you’ll be glad to find out that scientists recently invented a material so lightweight it makes styrofoam seem as heavy as a lead ingot.

In fact, “with a density of just 0.9 mg/cm3 the material is around 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and lighter than … ‘multiwalled carbon nanotube (MCNT) aerogel’ – also dubbed ‘frozen smoke’ – with a density of 4 mg/cm3” (Quick). Learn more about aerogels here.

Researchers at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and Caltech created an “ultralight metallic microlattice,” which, due to its nanoscale structural configuration vaguely reminiscent of the Eiffel tower, which consists 99.9% of air.  The scientists claim that it is the lightest material on earth.  To make the material, researchers fabricated “a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair” (Netburn). It’s so unbelievably light that the researchers made a version out of nickel, placed it on top of a dandelion and … nothing happened; check it – the stalk didn’t even bend:

Photo: Ultralight metallic microlattice — which is 99.9% air — is so light that it can sit atop dandelion fluff without damaging it. Credit: Dan Little / HRL Laboratories

So how, aside from dandelion decoration, might we use an ultralight metallic microlattice?  The new material demonstrates impressive strength and energy absorption, with the ability to recover from compression exceeding 50% strain.  The small wall thickness-to-diameter ratio of the material allows the individual tubes to remain flexible and absorb energy (Quick). The microlattice demonstrates potential for awesomeness across a wide range of applications. It could be used for catalyst supports, acoustic dampening, as impact protection, vibration dampening, in the aerospace industry, possibly in airplanes to save weight and corresponding jet fuel, bike helmets, or maybe even battery electrodes.

I’d like to know if the manufacturing process is scalable, if it’s toxic in any way, what the cost is to make the material, and if its performance decays over time.  But it’s exciting to think about the possibilities – and to imagine little ultralight metallic microlattice samples floating delicately to earth like so many swan feathers floating on the breeze.

WU XING:

The lightest material on earth has been filed … in earth (and metal).

Cited:

Netburn, Deborah. “Scientists Invent Lightest Material on Earth. What Now?” Los Angeles Times online. 11/17/11. Accessed 11/21/11.  URL.

Quick, Darren. “Newly Developed Metallic ‘Microlattice’ Material is World’s Lightest.” Gizmag.com. 11/17/11. Accessed 11/21/11.  URL.

Special thanks to @BBQSnob for the tip.

There wouldn’t be so many spy novels if there weren’t something so delightfully compelling about the idea of being a spy: you’re invited to imagine that your job is to sneak around in a trench coat and fedora, talking out of the side of your mouth and pretending to be something or someone you’re not in order to gather information on behalf of the resistance.

Knowing something you’re forbidden to know, or that other people want to know but don’t – or that other people don’t think you know, imparts a feeling of power and control that is like fresh, unadulterated catnip to a newborn kitten: heady stuff.

Image courtesy mike.shannonandmike.net

When I was younger I spent a lot of time writing cryptic messages in lemon juice on slips of computer paper – which at that time came in continuous sheets bordered by strips with holes and was divided by perforations for use in dot matrix printers. These messages could be passed with great stealth to friends in the school yard, who would then hold the paper over a heat source to reveal the messages. In the presence of heat, the acid in the lemon juice made the paper turn brown wherever it had been applied, thereby allowing dedicated ten year-olds to let each other know that someone had recently acquired a Barbie house.

I guess these days ten year-olds just text or email each other, which is great because it leaves more lemons for lemonade stands and other entrepreneurial activities.  But I am pretty sure the researchers who developed SPAM grew up in a time where analog methods were used to exchange information.  SPAM stands for “stenography by printed arrays of microbes” and it has nothing whatsoever to do with canned meat products.  The idea is that messages are encoded in colors of glowing bacteria, and they can be unlocked with antibiotics.

Image courtesy wikimedia commons

People have been encoding secret messages in living molecules for a while, but SPAM is unique among these methods because it’s simple: it requires “no gene sequencing equipment, microscopes, or other scarce and expensive laboratory gear to extract the coded message. Some simple LEDs and a smartphone would suffice, allowing the recipient to receive the printed microbes through the mail and quickly and easily unlock the message” (Dillow).  So maybe it’s a viable option for ten year-olds after all.

The research team inserted fluorescent proteins into seven different strains of the amazingly useful Escherichia coli bacteria, so that they would each glow in one of seven different colors under the right light.  The engineered bacterial were then grown in sequences of paired dots that represented numbers or letters and imprinted on a sheet of nitrocellulose (Dillow).  This meant that the message could be sent through the post like any other highly flammable piece of paper.

Image courtesy spam.com

The recipient of the message simply regrows the bacteria, places it under the right kind of light or exposes it to antibiotics, and BAM – the coded message reveals itself. The researchers were able to tune the bacteria to only express colors after a specific period of time, to respond to specific antibiotics and not others, and they even created a strain that would die off after a certain period of time.  To put it another way: this means that the message could literally self destruct in five seconds, which makes me absurdly happy (possibly because I’ve watched a LOT of Mission: Impossible over the years.

Although this messaging system is as cool as a tiger frolicking in the cool waters of a river in Southeast Asia, there are some issues: for one thing, a finite number of antibiotics presently exist in the world so messages could be decoded by a straightforward process of trial and error. The researchers behind the technology aren’t troubled by this limitation because they’re less interested in spy drama than you’d expect: “they’re more interested in developing new ways to watermark genetically modified organisms with ‘biological barcodes’ to protect intellectual property and make the world safer for modified life” (Dillow).

I was disappointed to learn that the bacteria are essentially a glowing copyright notice, but the fact remains that this development is rife with potential. In fact, I’m not going to say how I know this but I just found out that someone very close to you recently acquired a Barbie house.

WU XING:

I am filing super-spy bacterial invisible ink under water and earth.

Cited:

Dillow, Clay. “By Encoding Messages in Glowing Proteins, Scientists Turn E. Coli Into Invisible Ink.” Popsci.com 09/27/11. Accessed 10/05/11. URL.

Image courtesy newcritic.com

But yes, the day has dawned: TAKTL is a new ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) with seemingly “unlimited potential in the architecture, landscape and product design industries” (Source: TAKTL).  This new material is similar to GFRC (Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete) but since TAKTL has UHPC as a base, it outperforms GFRC in compressive, tensile, and flexural strength, and it can be cast in nearly any shape, texture, color, or pattern (Record).  This stuff is majestic. The last time I wrote a paragraph with that many acronyms in rapid succession I was putting together a report on the Works Progress Administration for my sixth grade history teacher.

Images courtesy TAKTL-LLC.com

The mix is proprietary, but it mostly incorporates familiar concrete ingredients. The real magic is in the matrix: the formulation was designed to “optimize the particle size of each material to ensure stronger chemical bonds and lower water absorption, yielding extremely high compressive, tensile and flexural strength. The resulting material exhibits a beautiful surface with integral pigment that stands up to water, salt and corrosive environmental contaminants. Further, TAKTL can be re-formulated for geographic markets to use materials available through local sources” (Source: TAKTL).

Image courtesy TAKTL-LLC.com

The company is based in Pennsylvania, but their approach to manufacturing is nothing short of progressive. The team at TAKTL have developed a mobile, modular manufacturing process that allows them to set up a facility close to any project in the world.  That makes it possible to source labor and materials locally – talk about shrinking your carbon footprint!  Look for installations of their products coming this fall.

WU XING:

I have filed TAKTL under earth because it’s concrete.

Cited:

“High Performance Concrete Gets a Makeover.” Architectural Record. May 2011. Page 69.

VergeLabs, an architecture and design practice based in the United Arab Emirates founded as a partnership between Ginger Krieg Dosier and Michael Dosier, brought some of that magic to concrete with their development of Glowcrete.

Image courtesy Vergelabs

The researchers used phosphorescent pigment in two ways to produce glowing concrete: they added the pigment to expansion cement, the pigment, when distributed unevenly, left a glowing trail that served as a record of the mixing process; and they also added the phosphorescent pigment to the concrete as aggregate. The even distribution of pigment in the second case creates a uniform distribution of light emission.

In each case, as the surface of the concrete weathers and erodes, new phosphorescent aggregate is exposed, which extends the lifespan of the luminescence (Source: Vergelabs).  I’d like to learn more about the phosphorescent pigment the researchers used – I’m not sure how long it lasts or whether it’s toxic (although I’d imagine the answers to those questions are: not very and yes).  That being acknowledged, I can so clearly imagine this material at the bottom of a swimming pool or fountain, or even on the underside of an unfinished concrete slab – pure magic.

WU XING:

I have filed glowcrete under Earth (concrete) and Fire (glowiness!)

Cited:

Dosier, Ginger Kreig and Michael. “Glowcrete.” Vergelabs Research in Architecture. 05/30/06. Accessed 06/03/11. URL.

Image courtesy arilourdes.wordpress.com

The scientists are using nanocellulose fibers from bananas, pineapples and other plants to create plastic that is 3-4 times stronger than petroleum-based plastics, and 30% lighter.  Not only that, nanocellulosic plastic is better at resisting heat, chemicals, and water.  The material reportedly rivals Kevlar in strength, but in contrast with that lovely chest-protecting substance, it’s renewable and biodegradable.  The Brazilian researchers believe that within a few years nanocellulosic plastics will enjoy widespread adoption.

To make nanocellulose, the researchers take cellulose, a familiar substance that provides the structure of the cell walls of green plants, and processes it to the point where “50,000 [fibers] fit within the diameter of a human hair” (Squatiglia).  The best source for the fibers has been pineapples, although bananas, coconut shells, agave and curaua, a plant related to pineapple, have also proved workable.  The researchers take the leaves and stems of the plants and heat them in a device similar to a pressure cooker, yielding a fine powder resembling talc. The fibers can be added to other raw materials to produce reinforced plastic, and could even be combined with petroleum-based plastic if a specific application required it, although the product would not biodegrade.

Image courtesy howei.com

The plastic is expensive to produce, but the cost would come down dramatically if the plastic were adopted by automobile manufacturers and other industrial systems.  Right now, one pound of nanocellulose can produce 100 pounds of plastic (Squatiglia).  While I haven’t been able to find out whether the researchers have tried to make nanocellulose with Tulip leaves, I guess this year the joke is on me!

WU XING:

I have filed nanocellulosic plastic under wood and earth.

Cited:

Squatiglia, Chuck. “Bananas Could Make Cars Leaner, Greener.”  Wired Online.  03/28/11. Accessed 04/20/11. URL.

Image courtesy en.wikipedia.org

Understandably, people were pretty much done with the plant, and outside of the occasional burst of color in springtime gardens, the Tulip carried on growing under the radar. That is, until a group of materials scientists out of the Delft University of Technology researching ultra-strong materials decided to take another look at the flower that had so fascinated their forebears.

“We had been working with minerals for so long, trying to find a way to strengthen steel,” says Delft University of Technology researcher Koenraad Van Tonder, “but we hit a dead end. The breakthrough came when I bought a bunch of what I thought were ordinary tulips for my girlfriend to apologize for forgetting our anniversary.  She threw them at me and stomped them with her feet, but we were both surprised to see that they were unharmed.”

Image courtesy www.zastavki.com

Van Tonder brought the tulips to the lab, where the team worked with specialists to analyze the plant.  It turned out that Van Tonder had purchased a tulip called “Tulipa fortis” and known among tulip aficionados for its hardiness.  The team discovered a unique cellular arrangement within the leaves along with two heretofore unknown phytochemicals, which they believe are responsible for the Tulip’s amazing strength.

Image © David Spears

Van Tonder and his team dried the leaves and pulverized them, then added hydrochloric acid to the powder. Placing the acid-powder mixture under tremendous heat and pressure, they were able to effect the formation of polymers.  The tulip plastic they produced proved to be easy to work with. “We found we could extrude the tulip polymer matrix into long chains, which could then be woven into cables,” says Van Tonder, “we are testing the cables now, but the results have been shocking. This is strong stuff.”

Using a single 1/4″ diameter woven tulip cable hooked up to a rig, the team was able to lift a grand piano. They then used two cables tied with a slip knot to tow Van Tonder’s car out of the graduate student parking lot and over to a mechanic. “The battery in my Yugo had died and I couldn’t afford to have it towed,” says Van Tonder, “but since we’ve discovered this amazing new material, I’m thinking of upgrading to a Fiat.”

The researchers are still testing the material, but early results indicate that the plastic is extremely stable, fire-resistant, and it appears not to deform in any way when subjected to changes in temperature. It’s stronger and lighter than steel, and can be molded, rotocast, and extruded into complex forms. When it comes to market, this Tulip-based plastic will revolutionize the construction industry. I think I see more tulip mania on the horizon!

WU XING:

I’ve filed Tulip Plastic under wood.

Cited:

Koenraad Van Tonder. Interview. 03/31/11. Delft University of Technology.

D’Aulaire Drawing of Athena

This and all subsequent images courtesy Träullit

Woodwool cement may sound a little odd, but the name perfectly describes the product: it’s wood fiber (in this case, more specifically, Spruce) that looks like tangled wool fibers, and which is bound together with cement.  The manufacturing process is relatively simple: wood slivers are cut from logs, mixed with water and cement, and put in molds to set into shape. Wood fiber gives the product a heat-insulating, heat retaining and sound-absorbing properties. The cement binder provides strength, moisture resistance and fire protection.

According to the product data, woodwool evens out humidity levels in spaces where it’s installed by “absorbing moisture from or emitting moisture to the ambient air. This contributes to a pleasant indoor climate which is good for both comfort and health. The high pH value also discourages mould and the material is not affected by rot” (Träullit).  The woodwool panels also store heat from the ambient air and emit it when the air temperature falls, presumably due to an increase in the thermal mass of the wall systems to which they are applied.  If that is true, installing the panels could lower energy costs and reduce environmental impact. I like the idea that applying an inert material to the walls could affect indoor air quality – I have an utterly miserable dehumidifier in my apartment and it’s a noisy energy hog with only one function.

Woodwool panels contribute to the quality of the indoor environment in so many ways: the open cell material structure reduces reflection of sound, dampening noise and contributing to “restful acoustics in residential buildings, industrial premises and public spaces” (Träullit).  Another aspect of this product that I love is the fact that you can vacuum the panels to clean them, and they don’t emit dust or particulate matter.

FORM US WITH LOVE came up with a hexagonal panel design that “complements the practicality of the material, creating a simple but striking product” (Träullit).  They plan to introduce new shapes and colors every year, and you can order the 2011 collection now.  The 19 x 21cm  hexagons come in a range of earthy colours with nature-inspired names: cloud, moss, leaf, sky and stone.

Träullit Dekor panels are designed to attach to your walls magnetically.  The tiles are supplied with magnets affixed to the back, and adhere to thin metal sheets that are applied to the wall surface.  They can be fixed by hand and rearranged at any time.  They can also be fitted to walls with screws or glue. Check out their website where you can play with a nifty little tool that will let you design your wall!

WU XING:

I have filed woodwool cement board under wood and earth.

Cited:

http://www.traullitdekor.se/

We don’t see many rammed earth buildings in the US (outside of the desert southwest) for many reasons including the idiosyncrasies of building code, but it’s a shame because the construction system produces absurdly beautiful walls and it uses extremely local materials.  To build rammed earth walls, start digging up the earth on your site (typically the mineral-rich clay-filled part of the earth, not the leafy decaying organic part) mix it with some cement or cement-like ingredients and maybe throw in some hemp fibers to absorb moisture, then tamp the mixture down in lovely wavy layers within the confines of some formwork.  The system doesn’t produce much construction waste (you can reuse formwork, etc) and because so much of the wall comes from the site itself there is less embodied energy used for transporting and manufacturing the material.  Also note that what you build out of earth will probably last for a pretty significant amount of time (see Pyramids, Mexico).

Images courtesy Meco’concept

The rammed earth technique has itself been around for millenia, but Meco’concept’s innovation is to take the formwork for rammed earth walls and reduce it down to the size of a building block.  They’ve developed a snazzy little hydraulic press that can produce 120 bricks per hour (Meco’concept).  Each block gets stamped with lego-like protrusions for ease of stacking (Brownell). If you happen to be in France, you can even rent the machine and go to work using whatever materials you find at hand. While building code in the US tends to purse its lips and peer curiously at rammed earth construction as though it were encountering an unexpected stain on a favorite silk necktie, the Meco’briq blocks can stack up to two stories and could behave similar to CMU (Concrete Masonry Units). Building code tends to assume a half-smile and gaze benevolently at CMU as though it were watching its only son excel at sports, so this new technology could potentially make inroads.

WU XING:

Earth. Hello!

Cited:

Brownell, Blaine. “DIY Earth Bricks.” Architect Magazine – Mind & Matter Blog. 02/24/11. Accessed 03/04/11. URL.