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OK, can you name a cheap, somewhat durable, and translucent substance that's not glass? The typical translucent substances people use in practice are various k
by bzbarsky 11y ago
OK, can you name a cheap, somewhat durable, and translucent substance that's not glass?
The typical translucent substances people use in practice are various kinds of glass, plexiglass (not durable; scratches up a lot), transparent ceramics of various sorts (generally not cheap), gems like sapphire (not cheap, especially for large-scale applications). Anything I'm missing?
- Retric 11y agoLacquer wood finish comes to mind, though tar is hardly durable. Not 100% on the specifics but people already use concrete sealant on roads so traction and cost wise it's in the ballpark. Don't forget Silicon is really quite tough so your really looking for something that can sit outside for 20 years vs. trying to protect fragile components.
- bzbarsky 11y agoSilicon is not necessarily tough in the sense of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toughness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toughness -- it really depends. The hard problem in road surfaces is not the sitting outside for 20 years. Glass, even cheap crappy glass, handles this last just fine; see windows in houses. The hard problems are dealing with repeated time-varying mechanical stress and dealing with thermal expansion (windows can play fast and loose with this by leaving expansion space around the glass inside the frame).
- Retric 11y agoCrystal silicon not steel, but it's reasonably close to concrete. And concrete is the high end road surface vs. asphalt. Crystal silicon [.6 - 1.3KIc (MPa · m1/2)] https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/355152/1/Thermomechanical+properties+and+fracture+in+single+crystal+silicon+-+REVIEWED.pdf https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/355152/1/Ther... (Page 12) Concrete [0.2-1.4 KIc (MPa · m1/2)] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_toughness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_toughness