Kent team create material that can stop supersonic impacts #WearableWednesday
The University of Kent is cooking up a shock absorbing gel. Traditional bullet proof vests stop projectiles from peircing but you will still feel a kick. This new material could be used to soften the blow! Via Smithsonian:
The team ran the same experiment with a control gel. When pelted with a supersonic particle, the control gel allowed it to pass through and bore a crater in the aluminum plate behind the gel. The projectile was also destroyed in the process. The researchers published their findings on the preprint server bioRxiv; the paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.
“Our material perfectly caught and ‘cuddled’ with the projectile … keeping it beautifully preserved,” says paper co-author Jennifer Hiscock, a supramolecular chemist at the University of Kent, to New Scientist’s Carissa Wong.
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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!