Lightest material.Engineers have created the world's lightest material. It's called a microlattice and is made of tiny metal tubes crisscrossed to form a mesh. "The trick is that the tubes are hollow," says Lorenzo Valdevit, an engineer at the University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). , Irvine. That makes the structure 99.99 percent air.The material is formed by coating a plastic model of the structure with a thin layer of nickel alloy Noun 1. nickel alloy - an alloy whose main constituent is nickel nickel-base alloy alloy, metal - a mixture containing two or more metallic elements or metallic and nonmetallic elements usually fused together or dissolving into each other when molten; "brass , or a mixture of metals. The plastic is then dissolved away from the inside, leaving behind empty metal tubes. "The walt of each tube is only 1/1000th the thickness of a human hair," says Valdevit. The lightweight and spongy spongy /spon·gy/ (spun´je) of a spongelike appearance or texture. spong·y adj. Resembling a sponge in appearance, elasticity, or porosity. flexible structure is perfect for use in batteries and shock absorbers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DENSITY OF MATERIALS The world's lightest material has a density (mass over volume) of 0.9 milligrams/ [centimeter.sup.3]. About how many times lighter is it than Styrofoam? [GRAPHIC OMITTED] |
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