World's First Practical Plastic Magnet 183
Stopmotioncleaverman writes "New Scientist is reporting that scientists at the University of Durham in the UK have created the world's first plastic magnet to work at room temperature from two compounds, emeraldine base polyaniline (PANi) and tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). In 2001, scientists in Nebraska created a plastic magnet, but it only worked at 10 Kelvin.
Most notably from the article - "One of the most likely applications is in the magnetic coating of computer hard discs, which could lead to a new generation of high-capacity discs".
This story is also being reported in lots of other places."
I have this image.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have this image.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I have this image.. (Score:2)
Plastic Fantastic (Score:5, Funny)
Mmmmm Naked Nurses
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:5, Funny)
My grandmother and ex-wife are nurses. The naughty nurse fantasy was ruined for me.
LK
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:1)
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:2, Funny)
Dude - you were married to your grandma?!?
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:2)
As soon as I hit the submit button, I knew that some asshat would try to make this lame joke.
You do know the difference between "is" and "are" as well as "nurse" and "nurses" right? It's obvious that I was talking about two separate people.
LK
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:4, Informative)
Have you ever even seen a real nurse?
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:1, Funny)
Yes.... (Score:2)
Yes and the one in the MRI room accross the coridor looks rather sexy...
- Sorry, miss ? Is this a pure coton shirt or is it synthetic ?
- It's symthetic, but I don't see the poin... Hey ! Stop that ! WHAT ARE YOU DOING ?!?!?
- Sorry, but I have to ask you to remove your shirt. With all these new materials, you never know...
{ ducks }
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:2)
Uh huh. One floor down I have a nurse school (sometimes being co-located here is a good thing), and trust me, there's enough of wet dreams walking around down there. Too bad I don't have many excuses to loaf around there.
Though I get your point that after 20-30 years of hard manual labor they might be slightly less attractive
Kjella
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:2)
Re:Plastic Fantastic (Score:2)
Oo ooo ooo I getta make a rare Married with Children reference!
"It's ennnnnnnnema tiiiiiiiiiiime!"
Man, that's like using a Q in scrabble.
I love you're style. (Score:2)
Thank you guy ! Man, I love your style !
...gotta test some new "hard drive" technology at the MRI...
Too bad : today I don't work at the NMRI [wikipedia.org], but at the CAT/Scan [wikipedia.org]... Doh !
- Hum, sorry colleagues, but I'll have to leave early...
{ Grabs a hard disk and a pack of "lubrificated plastics" }
-
{ Runs fast accross the corridor to the MRI room... }
Coming soon: Refrigerator Magnet Barbie (Score:4, Funny)
INSENSITIVE CLOD! (Score:4, Funny)
But I need to attach her to the fridge NOW!
Why wait? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Coming soon: Refrigerator Magnet Barbie (Score:2)
What's wrong with epoxy?
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
This takes time (Score:5, Informative)
I might be wrong though, I'm not a rocket scientist (or polymer scientist if you want)
Re:This takes time (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that they know they can get magnetic properties from the polymer they can work on refining it - making it stronger, more uniform and possibly "faster".
Also, there's no real detail about the methods behind the creation of the magnets - for all you know it might cost them 50p to make each magnet, which would make mass-produced children's toys perfectly possible.
Re:This takes time (Score:1)
Re:This takes time (Score:2)
Re:This takes time (Score:2)
Re:This takes time (Score:1)
It was a fortunate decision, because over the months the original polymer had developed magnetic properties"
Correct me if Im wrong but does this mean they are only temporary magnets. To be the worlds first plastic magnet shouldn't it be permanent?
Re:This takes time (Score:2)
(Hint: no.)
Re:This takes time (Score:4, Interesting)
People were delivering similar reports on "discovery of room temperature superconductivity" in the past. The trouble is, they could not repeat their achievements. They were also from Croatia, which didn't give them that much publicity.
Re:This takes time (Score:3, Informative)
They obviously know how to make it, they just aren't very good at it yet since it is inconsistant throughout the material
Dentures (Score:2, Funny)
Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure the audiophiles will correct me, but is it possible that this could be used to produce seriously high quality audio gear: specifically speakers?
My understanding of speaker technology is that at it's most basic, a cone is held attached in some way to a magnet, which is moved by modulating the intensity of an opposing magnetic field. The movement of the cone produces sound.
If you could build the magnet into the cone, ie make the cone out of magnetic plastic, that would have to eliminate a source of distortion from the reproduction, which would lead to better quality sound.
I see this as a more realistic first application than building platters out of plastic.
What do the audiophiles have to say?
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do the audiophiles have to say?
The "audiophiles" will say whatever you want them to say given the right price, and hype. Make it expensive and hype it up like "monster cables" and it'll be audio gold. Make it cheap and common and everyone will want "old fashioned magnets".
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:2)
Also might be a good cheap way to embed signalling devices in pavement for autopiloted cars.
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:1)
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:5, Insightful)
Paper is the preffered choice; there's also kevlar laminate for some high end speakers. Some high frequency speakers ("tweeters") are made of aluminium.
In fact, one of the latest "advancements" in speaker construction was not long ago when a japanese fella discovered how to shape thin wood sheets into cones... after soaking them with sake - apparently it's good for more than drinking, and makes one hell of a cone material. Not cheap though.
I build my audio gear, and you wouldn't beleive the ammount of variables that goes into speaker designing (number of speakers, enclosure volume and shape, variable impedances, type and implementation of crossover network, etc). I think this technology could improve the magnets used in speakers if nothing else, making them cheaper, or stronger, but plastic cones (unless VERY rigid), it's not a good idea overall.
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:3, Informative)
"reference speakers" being an audio engineering euphamism for "really shitty sounding speakers to make sure that the mix still sounds ok on people's really shitty sounding speakers"
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:2)
I was going to go for 'euphemism for "worst sounding speakers ever so that if it sounded good on them, it had to sound good on anything else"'
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
An idea speaker cone has no mass (Score:2, Informative)
About as close to zero mass as you can get. By no means stiff at al
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:2, Informative)
You suppose you could create some sort of sound that way, given enough power, but generally you let the magnet remain stationary and attach the much lighter copper windings that produce the oscillating field to the cone.
If the new material is insanely much more
magnetic than curr
Re:Potential for high-end audio applications? (Score:1)
Cool! (Score:5, Funny)
Heh
Re:Cool! (Score:3, Funny)
Ohdear... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ohdear... (Score:2)
p
What people think (Score:3, Funny)
Could this lead (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Could this lead (Score:3, Informative)
In the article, they say that they were ready to throw the batch away, but they had aquired magnetic properties over 3 months in storage.
Whilst we must obviously wait and see, it doesnt look likely at this point.
Electromagnetism with plastic magnets ! (Score:3, Insightful)
electric motors and generators isnt it ?
Re:Electromagnetism with plastic magnets ! (Score:2)
However, I would imagine that it would be hard to match the resilience of metals with plastic, not to mention the material nature in terms of several factors (such as resistance, inductance, etc).
Re:Electromagnetism with plastic magnets ! (Score:2)
And he said resistance, not resilience.
Re:Electromagnetism with plastic magnets ! (Score:2)
But I stand by my point re: conduction - look at the title, fuckwit. Electromagnetism. Electromagnets. Clear?
Re:Electromagnetism with plastic magnets ! (Score:2)
Please read subject more carefully kthxbye.
Meltdown (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Meltdown (Score:2)
Furniture (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Furniture (Score:1)
Make boat/aircraft/travel cups out of them!
Now if your boat is attacked by a shark, your drink will stay on the table!
Thing is, I think this is a solution in search of a problem. Theres probably a greater magnetic field strength inside a fridge magnet than these things.
Whilst making plastics magnetic is cool, I would be more interested in running plastic circuit boards and components, which if I remember rightly is whats required fo
Re:Furniture (Score:1)
Proof that people watch too much TV?
Jaysyn
Re:Furniture (Score:1)
Never really got into watching regular TV.
Re:Furniture (Score:2)
I remeber... (Score:3, Interesting)
If these people manage to create powerful magnets for cheap, expect a lot of magnet-based devices (motors, hard disks, generators) to drop prices in the future; powerful ceramic magnets are still very expensive.
Re:I remeber... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh dear. I sure am glad I wasn't cooper when they tried to figure out how conductive he is...
Re:I remeber... (Score:1)
Maybe here [google.com]?
Re:I remeber... (Score:3, Informative)
References, please.
I worked in the field of conductive polymers for a year, and I'm fairly familiar with what the state of the art was in 2002-3, and let me assure you, nothing that's been developed at this point is remotely close to being as conductive as copper.
There has been some minor success with organic (polymer) semiconductors, but you're not going
Electric properties? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with most magnets and electromagnets is that they are excellent conductors. In some applications this is desired, in many irrelevant, in some very undesired. A neat new way to mount easily replacable chips/cartridges, etc wherever spare metal parts may mean problems...
And a nice property of many polymers is that it's quite common to make transparent derivatives. "glass magnet", interesting idea?
Re:Electric properties? (Score:2)
From the article:
The new polymer was developed by Naveed Zaidi and his colleagues in Durham's organic electroactive materials group. The team created the new polymer from two compounds, emeraldine base polyaniline (PANi) and tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). They chose PANi because it is a metal-like electrical conductor that is stable in
Replacing copper in hydrogen fuelcell engines (Score:3, Interesting)
For us Europeans at least, for US American cars the reduced weight would be, what a reduction of 1%, and most likely be meaningless.
--
Dennis SCP
Re:Replacing copper in hydrogen fuelcell engines (Score:5, Informative)
Electric motor needs magnets on both sides, both stator and motor. Only one needs to create variable field. You can perfectly well make the stator or rotor with normal magnets, frequently done with small motors too. The problem is any larger magnets are damn heavy compared to their strength, so usually in stronger/bigger motors electromagnets are used instead. Now if the plastic magnet was light enough and strong enough, it could perfectly well replace half of the coils present in the motor. The other half would have to remain there to create the changing field.
Medical applications (Score:2, Funny)
Conversion (Score:3, Informative)
10 Kelvin = -263.15 degrees Celsius
According to Google [google.com].
Re:This is Slashdot, dammit- way offtopic (Score:2)
You can posit these conspiracy theories all you want
Implants (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Implants (Score:1, Funny)
As a resident of Durham I should point out... (Score:5, Funny)
This article might be a tad misleading, most days room temperature here is about 10 Kelvin if you leave a window open.
(For people that don't understand the Kelvin temperature scale this is not true and is in fact a bad attempt at humour)
Great for Intel (Score:3, Insightful)
Link to Slashdot from side panel of article (Score:1)
-phozz
Probably highly toxic (Score:2)
Re:Probably highly toxic (Score:2)
Re:Probably highly toxic (Score:2)
- Thomas;
where is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:where is it? (Score:2)
Joel Miller (Score:2)
I had beginning undergraduate chemistry from Joel Miller [utah.edu] at the University of Utah. He's working on plastic magnets as well, but he doesn't have them working at room temperature yet AFAIK. He was quite possibly the worst teacher I've ever had, though he's apparently a fabulous chemist. When talking about the noble gasses, he would always pronounce it 'Nobel', and he even corrected his spelling on the chalkboard from 'noble' to 'nobel'. Our TA's said that he has his eyes on the prize.
This is really going to ruin cartoons (Score:2, Funny)
He fed that annoying RoadRunner BBs and birdseed and turned on the magnet.
It pulled in things like satellites, cars, boats, etc.
Now, with this new invention --
Re:This is really going to ruin cartoons (Score:2)
Confusion (Score:2)
Re:!!!MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:2)
stick it in your ear (Score:2)
Magnetic tyres (Score:2, Interesting)
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:2)
Re:You heard it here first! (Score:2)
are you familiar with the concept of a harddrive works? the thing needs magnetic components.
(and if you're bored take one apart.. quite powerful magnets inside!)
Re:Take a normal magnet... (Score:2)
Re:Take a normal magnet... (Score:1)
Re:Take a normal magnet... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:but... (Score:2)
Which means the magnets only working during a Nebraska winter.
Re:but... (Score:2)
Nebraska winters are a doddle. At least it gets you out in the open air.
Re:Sex Toys (Score:1)