1. Aerogel Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records , more than any other material. Sometimes called “frozen smoke”, aerogel is made by the supercritical drying of liquid gels of alumina, chromia, tin oxide, or carbon. It’s 99.8% empty space, which makes it look semi-transparent. Aerogel is a fantastic insulator — if you had a shield of aerogel, you could easily defend yourself from a flamethrower. It stops cold, it stops heat. You could build a warm dome on the Moon. Aerogels have unbelievable surface area in their internal fractal structures — cubes of aerogel just an inch on a side may have an internal surface area equivalent to a football field. Despite its low density, aerogel has been looked into as a component of military armor because of its insulating properties. This tiny block of transparent aerogel is supporting a brick weighing 2.5 kg. The aerogel’s density is 3 mg/cm3. 2. Tr...
Engineering & interesting stuff !!!