materials

video: quantum levitation

Came across this today. They even tease you with just enough of a physics explanation to get you curious. How it works According to the website, the ceramic, once brought down to a low enough temperature, becomes a superconductor (more like a super-duper conductor as they claim zero energy loss). Now that it is a superconductor, [...]

Tagged as: magnets, materials, physics

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green plastics search engine

A while back I shared 6 of my favorite materials websites. Well I just came across another great site, courtesy of IDES, that I wish I’d included. The site is IDES’s new Prospector Tool, and it’s got some nice search features that Matweb doesn’t have (they’ve got some videos after the jump), but one in particular [...]

Tagged as: biodegradaility, materials, plastics, recycling

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Thumbnail image for pre-consumer vs post-consumer recycled content

pre-consumer vs post-consumer recycled content

This past weekend I was flipping through the March 2010 edition of Metropolis and came across an advertisement for a new line of San Fransisco bus shelter. As eye candy, it was in line with the rest of the magazine, but read some of the copy and you see they are trying to sell it [...]

Tagged as: Koda XT, LEED, materials, polycarbonate, recycle

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Thumbnail image for a wake-up story

a wake-up story

If you’re anything like me, you occasionally (read: habitually) flip through trade magazines, checking to see if any badass new materials have cropped off. Graphene you say?  Sweet. Aerogel? Awesome. Transparent aluminum? Beam me up. Unfortunately, even as a sustainability nut I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that my knee-jerk reaction [...]

Tagged as: materials

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Thumbnail image for 6 non-sucky materials sites

6 non-sucky materials sites

As product designers we deal with materials every day, but it’s a messy world out there and a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) number of materials websites suck. These ones don’t. I promise. MatWeb MatWeb is the big daddy when it comes to engineering materials.  Their enormous selection of generic (i.e. polycarbonate) and proprietary [...]

Tagged as: materials, references

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