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from the besides-letting-someone-shoot-you dept.
The testing of soft body armor has been a big concern because the deployment of a new kind of fiber—believed to be superior to the previous material—unexpectedly failed in 2003, resulting in the death of a police officer. That and other incidents prompted a 2005 recall of some of the vests made with the new material.
Although the performance of these vests was superior when they were fresh out of the box and in pristine condition, tests later showed that the mechanical properties of the fibers inside the vests began to deteriorate after a few months of normal wear. The new vests were eventually removed from market entirely and the manufacturer was sued by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
[...] The positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) technique provides a molecular-level view of the structure of materials. It has been used for testing materials in other sectors, including porous membranes and semiconductor insulators. For this work, positrons were injected into ballistic fibers and enabled researchers to determine if any voids were created during folding on a scale of less than 5 nanometers.
Using PALS, Holmes and Soles discovered that void levels are very sensitive indicators of damage sustained by the fibers after folding; a larger population of voids means a better chance of fiber failure. The team previously suspected that void creation was a critical component of mechanical degradation, but the small angle X-ray scattering measurements that had been used in the past tended to be less sensitive to voids smaller than 5 nanometers and proved to be inconclusive. The critical damage was occurring on much finer length scales.
Until better materials are developed, do not fold, spindle, or mutilate your bulletproof vest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @07:36AM (2 children)
You should probably add these too:
https://www.pewpewtactical.com/best-electronic-hearing-protection-ear-muffs-shooting/ [pewpewtactical.com]
https://www.shootingandsafety.com/best-ear-protection-for-shooting/ [shootingandsafety.com]
If you care about your ears, protect your ears. Other people practicing their marksmanship near you might not invest in suppressors for THEIR guns.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @08:07AM
Nah, anyone wanting a silencer is just trying to commit crimes without getting caught, like poaching, assassinating, and shooting down drones. Nefarious purposes all, and we can be sure that these people are a meance to society. But the greatest thing about it, is that now we have something else to say besides "auto" that will send the gun nuts off into dissertations of improbable technical jargon. Did you know that "recoil" and "bump" are two different things. unless you put them into one single stock? Did you know that recoiling from assault weapons is not their fault, and a ugly-ass military gun can be a good pet if someone is just willing to put the time into loving it? Yes all this and more is true! But it is also true that only assassins and alt-right type wanna-be assassins have any desire for silencers. Aren't most rednecks spending all their time trying to make the other significant others in their lives, their "truck" and their "woman", louder and more obnoxious rather than quieter? See? Assassins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 18 2017, @01:50PM
"If you care about your ears, protect your ears. Other people practicing their marksmanship near you might not invest in suppressors for THEIR guns."
That's why I use the rifle range instead. People aim carefully and don't blaze away. The last time I was on the pistol range some old dude with a Dirty Harry gun was blasting away and blasting away at the target 10 yds out, maybe hitting the paper one in 20 times, and he had stretched his arms so far out front I got showered with his burning hot casings. And even with all the ear protection my ears were still ringing half an hour later. Not an enjoyable time on the range.
Washington DC delenda est.