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http://aluminiuminsider.com/researchers-confirm-discovery-floating-aluminium/
Like most common metals, aluminium lacks natural buoyancy. However, with a little rearranging of the metal’s natural molecular structure, one can produce an ultra-light crystalline form of the metal that is actually less dense than water and, as a result, floats upon it.
Research conducted by Utah State University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry professor Alexander Boldyrev and published in the latest issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry C has yielded just such a crystalline form using computational modeling.
“My colleagues’ approach to this challenge was very innovative,” explained Boldyrev. “They started with a known crystal lattice, in this case, a diamond, and substituted every carbon atom with an aluminum tetrahedron.”
Boldyrev’s colleagues, namely Iliya Getmanskii, Vitaliy Koval, Rusian Minyaev, and Vladimir Minkin of Southern Federal University in Rostov-on Don, Russia, confirmed the structure which is metastable and has a density of 0.61 grams per cubic centimeter. By comparison, conventional aluminium possesses a density of 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:23PM (3 children)
If you don't find a way to keep it there, I reckon all that space is useless.
I really doubt it - after all, we are dealing with energy barriers (for fusion) at the order 10 keV.
Now, suppose that a cubic cage of 8 Al atoms would collapse with such a force to cause two D to fuse - which means 500keV stored by 8 atoms
27g of Al is a mole - Avogadro's number says 6.023e23 atoms.
Which mean 7.25e22 individual cages of 8 atoms, with no corners/sides shared between them
If each cage can perform a work of 10keV and 1keV is 1.6e-16, the entire energy in those 7.25e22 cages will be 120.46MJ. That's the equivalent of 28kg of TNT in 27g of metastable floating aluminium.
Without a weird screening effect on the coulomb field of the trapped hydrogen (and lowering the coulomb barrier 100-1000 times less), fusion's not gonna happen.
Feeling of guts: about 200g-300g of pure-ethanol-induced bravery for an 85kg grunt body? I don;t know, perhaps eth-fueled can step in with his expertise.
Or perhaps 3 to 5 worth of American-football concussions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:25PM
Correction "which means
500keV10keV stored by 8 atoms".The following computations uses the 10keV value though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:02PM
28kg vs 27 g is a factor of about a thousand. Given that TNT is actually pretty shitty energy storage, that's a lot closer to being possible than I would have guessed.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:21PM
> 3 to 5 worth of American-football concussions
New unit for behavior : My congressman is running at about 76 AFC.