Scientists develop transparent wood that is stronger and lighter than glass

Just watching that now. Nile Red is using an older process. The process described in the article is a new method published 2 weeks ago that is much simpler and leaves most of the lignin in the final product.

milesvp• 5 years ago

I've only recently come across Nile Red, and I highly endorse his videos. I somehow managed to spend over half an hour watching him extract water from epsom salt, and even though it was nearly the equivalent of watching paint dry, it still remained fascinating to watch.

jaggederest• 5 years ago

Ironically, it turns out that paint drying is an incredibly complex and fascinating process. Whether it's acrylic, latex, oil or resin-based paint, there are some deep things happening in there.

I actually once got a job (partly) by discussing the chemistry of crosslinking polymerization in oil paint with my future boss.

qart• 5 years ago

If you like Nile Red, also check out Cody'sLab and Explosions&Fire. Cody does all kinds of wacky things like drinking diluted cyanide. Explosions&Fire synthesizes all kinds of weird explosives, some of which even scare chemistry professors.

jandrese• 5 years ago

So it's fiberglass except it uses thin strips of bleached wood in place of the glass fiber substrate?

Also, being lighter than glass (presumably by unit volume?) is a pretty low bar. Glass is heavy. "Stronger" is so vague it's almost meaningless. Stronger under tension? Compression? Flex? Impact resistance? What?

andylynch2• 5 years ago

This is a clever variation on impregnation resins, which aren’t now and are getting more and more popular. It will depend on the timber and treatment, but expect higher tensile & compressive strength then the wood, plus more hardness and stability. This would be very interesting for structural windows and likely much cheaper than glass in similar size. Probably better thermal insulation too.

craftinator• 5 years ago

I'd worry about the effects of UV on the resins, if replacing windows with it. Would likely need a coating to prevent discoloration.

ooboe4• 5 years ago

Several mechanical properties are discussed in the published paper:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/5/eabd7342

dzhiurgis• 5 years ago

I'll also add that marine epoxy is pretty nasty stuff, although there has been innovations there too.

GizmoSwan• 5 years ago

Hair thin anything can look transparent though. I seems to be paper thin.

As building products go, I believe rot resistant glass infused wood as a substitute for pressure treated wood is a more useful product specially in humid regions.

wjko21• 5 years ago

even if it's not completely transparent and can not be used in a window, it could still be useful as a wall material to let some of the daylight into the house.

Pfhreak• 5 years ago

Especially since it appears to diffuse the light, which is actually desirable in some cases.

andylynch2• 5 years ago

Looks like they worked with 1-1.5 mm balsa. sheets. You could make this into plywood. Would be interesting to test this with denser timber.

joemi• 5 years ago

From the article, the process involves 1mm thick pieces of wood. But it's reasonable to assume that a thicker plywood could then be made out of those 1mm thick pieces and would maintain a lot of the translucency.

polytely• 5 years ago

I feel like I've seen versions of this news article for years now? Is this an actual breakthrough or will I see one again on a couple of months

seph-reed• 5 years ago

This is just epoxy with wood around it.

skapadia• 5 years ago

I was expecting transparent aluminum Star Trek jokes in this thread. Disappointed!

1970-01-01• 5 years ago

I'm thinking the military application for this is translucent drones.

soperj• 5 years ago

I wonder whether or not it blocks certain light frequencies.

Scientists develop transparent wood that is stronger and lighter than glass

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