I Waterproofed Myself With Aerogel!

I feel safe. Are you sure they WON'T hurt me? It's not permanently okay, let me back up for a moment. I want to talk about the properties of airgel, the lightest solid in the world. What I'm going to do is lean in so it comes through this microphone and then can you do it again? Yes, this is what it sounds like. It's strange. It has a metal ring first recognized by the inventor of airgel, Samuel Kistler. the way back in 1931. now airgel is an excellent thermal insulator but it is not the easiest material to work with.

I can try? Sure, oh, I didn't, I don't have the touch, oh, I can't, I can make it sound, oh. No, it didn't take much to break it, right, it breaks quite easily, so is there a way to take advantage of the extraordinary thermal insulation of airgel but make it more usable? What I prepared here is just a combination of airgel particles, silica airgel. particles and a non-flammable binder and you should be able to put it on your skin and hit yourself with the blowtorch, right? I'll try it, okay, so just take a little bit and squeeze it around your finger. yeah, just squeeze it around here one finger, two fingers, whatever you want, no matter what it is, I'm doing it oh yeah, that's it, yeah, I'll be good, I just want to make sure that the fire when it goes around your finger doesn't hit the bearskin.

It looks like it's pretty thin around the tip of this finger, how thick should it be? You're making me nervous holding a blowtorch. Can I do the blowtorch or can you absolutely do it? Because I mean, if this goes wrong, how hot? is the flame of a blowtorch, well it's very hard to tell, but in our experience it's usually at least 1500 degrees C and can reach temperatures up to 2000, so yes, this is very hot, okay, let's try it, this It's so bad that nervous little pot there. You know, it looks like I'm roasting a marshmallow. Why is it burning like this?

What is burning the folder right now? That's right, if people just keep the rhythm there, it doesn't feel hot at all. My finger doesn't feel hot. That's all crazy, I can't believe how little heat I feel going through the FLIR 10 2013 10 temperature ranges and here the airgel is clearly hotter than the upper limit of 160 degrees Celsius. I mean, it's glowing hot orange, so it clearly is. incredibly hot, I mean, if you can see the black body radiation, you know it's very hot, so we went to the highest temperature range, so it gets to 2000 Celsius 881 907 907 907 degrees Celsius, that's absurd, quite well, right in front of my finger, what?

So this was almost a thousand degrees Celsius, but behind this thin layer of airgel my fingers are just warm. Wow, I mean, this is clearly isolating. This video is about how to take the extraordinary properties of

aerogel

s and improve them, for example. I'm about to enter this pool without getting wet. There's a layer of air right next to my skin. That thin layer of air is what makes my skin look silver. Light from certain angles reflects off the water-air interface. it's called total internal reflection which is very strange, this is a really cool effect, I mean besides the fact that I'm basically waterproof, I feel like this extra air on me makes me float more than usual, let me try to get out together into the water and see if I'm still dry. that's true, no, I don't really feel wet at all, that was strange, really strange, so how did I become waterproof?

I made it with airgel particles, taking a bucket of them and covering

myself

with the best, but this is a strange way to go waterproof because normal silica airgel is hydrophilic, here we go, this is a hydrophilic airgel, so all those OAH groups inside the airgel absorb the liquid and cause the airgel structure to collapse. Airgel is really good at absorbing water. First, two reasons: It contains a large surface area due to its nanoscale sponge-like structure. A piece of airgel the size of an ice cube contains half a football field of surface area, making it good at absorbing many molecules, something scientists have tried to exploit.

Favorite application that I still think is a good idea today is what is the idea is a physical insecticide so most insecticides work as neurotoxins they are called cholinesterase inhibitors it is the same mechanism as nerve gas and we spray it on crops and things, but a physical. The insecticide works by basically sticking to the outer skin of the insect and basically sucking out all the moisture or oils to the point where they just dry out to death, it's like putting salt in a Sluggers, yeah that's it. a very good analogy exactly, the other reason why it is good at absorbing water specifically is because its structure is covered with OAH groups that attract water molecules and that makes it ideal for use in museums in the past.

I've been working with a company in Italy called opium that makes the museum's display cases, I mean, they made the display case for Mona Lisa. They are interested in putting

aerogel

s in the display cases because it is a passive humidity regulator, essentially once you have it inside, if the humidity increases the original, a lot if it decreases it. It releases some of its absorption capacity from air gels and is even being used right now to help detect earthquakes on Mars. These were the ones made for NASA's knowledge mission. This airgel looks like chalk because the so-called zeolite particles are dispersed throughout it and can absorb. humidity even at very low pressures there is a seismometer that contains three small seismometers and it requires, since they are so small, they require an exceptional vacuum inside, otherwise the movement is stamped, so that is what we developed, this to the zoo lights predominantly helped absorb humidity.

Going off of the hypotheses, it gave me some gasifications of different things, so it's like holding the vacuum by holding - throwing things, it's actually a ball of vacuum if you think about it that way and the interesting thing about it is that it doesn't require any powers. any consumption is very light, so essentially this is what allowed the internal mission to work. Airgel can absorb up to 25 times its weight in water, but for some applications this is not ideal, so once we've done that, that bit of airgel will be ruined. Very much yes, that is entropy, irreversible damage, to counteract this problem we take a hydrophobe, it is a reactive chemical substance that when it touches a non-H group it spontaneously reorganizes with that age group and creates this large non-polar group that repels water when replace it.

Only 30% of the Oh H groups that cover the interior of the airgel with these hydrophobic groups can make an airgel that perfectly repels water, so here the water bounces, is completely waterproof, does not penetrate and can remain in the water. for months and it will be the same as if it had never been wet. Are you ready. I guess we're going to shoot. It feels funny because it barely feels like the water is touching me because somehow the water isn't touching me. not touching you, that's what's amazing on a molecular level, it's being repelled, look how crazy, it's like a strange laminar flow, this is so amazing that airgel can become impermeable to water or more absorbent, it's naturally fragile, but it can be transform into a sticky paste and so far I've only focused on silica airgel, but aerogels can be made from all kinds of different materials, so all of these materials are nanostructured, that's right, and they have nano-sized pores, about 20 nanometers, that's right. and they have more than 50% errors, so they are also lightweight, yes, some of them are made of polymers and there is a balance between thermal and mechanical properties.

A traditional silica airgel typically has around 15 milliwatts per meter thermal Kelvin. conductivity, which means approximately 3 times, 2 to 3 times better insulator than polystyrene foam, these materials would be between one and a half and two times more insulating than polystyrene foam, between 20 and 26 milliwatts per meter Kelvin, this is A poly-to-wood gel, this chemistry came from NASA, making it an excellent insulating material, but it is not flammable. It feels like wood internally, we call it Martian tape. Another way to make airgel more viable is to incorporate it into composite materials like blankets, something between silicon and silica. cute, feels great, doesn't it feel almost like a stuffed animal?

Yes, exactly, this is a new type of airgel blanket that in the future we may find in something like an astronaut suit or maybe even in clothing. What is this material actually? fiberglass feels like it's a fiberglass that's been infused with airgel and that fiberglass airgel compound, because aerogels are traditionally a very fragile bike, laying it with the fiberglass allows you making something that can be flexed, cut, sewn and wrapped is not. The cutest thing is that it throws dust when you touch it, but go ahead, the dust is silica airgel to transform silica and it is very safe, it is not, for example, quartz fiber or asbestos, which are long fibers with an aspect ratio that the The body has no chemical or physical means to break down these things, the body easily captures and expels them and it's not dangerous and this is what they use to insulate underwater pipelines and refineries and all kinds of applications, so just that thickness alone insulates a pipe, yeah, so that thickness is one centimeter thick, in one centimeter you get the same effective insulation value as three centimeters over one inch of mineral wool or fiberglass alone, so it's a tremendously better insulator. , this blanket is actually what I will be putting to the test in the final episode of the airgel trilogy, so subscribe if you don't want to miss it.