Strongest metal is lighter than water
Here’s a block of metal that is so light, its density so low, that it floats on water. It can also withstand intense pressures and appears to be ideal to use to manufacture boats, reports motherboard.vice.com.
There are, of course, several types of metals that float on water, but few of them are useful as an actual building material. Nikhil Gupta, a researcher at NYU Polytechnic University has designed some of the strongest materials ever devised. Gupta works with a class of material called “syntactic foam”, which are composite materials that are filled with hollow particles.
HOLE-Y METAL
A piece
of one of Gupta’s metals looks and feels solid. But at the edges of any given piece of material, you can see holes because the spherical particles don’t always line up with the edge (it’s kind of like how you can see holes in Swiss cheese). These hollow particles, of course, are why the metal is so light. Gupta’s is a new class of magnesium-alloy syntactic foam that always floats on water.
It’s the first metallic syntactic foam that has a density lower than one gram per centimeter^3, which is the same density as water. Anything lighter than that will float, as this one does.
“Such [materials] can open up buoyancy-related applications in marine vessel structures,” Gupta wrote in a paper published in the International Journal of Impact Engineering.
SUPER STRONG
The
foam is 44 per cent stronger than similar, aluminum-based foams and each individual sphere within the foam can withstand pressure of more than 25,000 pounds per square inch before breaking, which is roughly 100 times the pressure exerted by water coming out of a fire hose.
Gupta said that the material will likely be used in military boats and amphibious transports, and that it can also help make cars lighter.