Translucent concrete

[blobrana]

Hum,
So you thought only Superman who could see through concrete walls, but an exhibit at the National Building Museum shows you can do it too.

Called "Liquid Stone," the show features translucent concrete.

One display is a wall of translucent concrete blocks. When someone stands in front of it and light is shone from behind, the person's shadow can be seen clearly on the other side.

 :-o

[whabang]

One step closer to transparent aluminium! :-D

[blobrana]

Er,
That would be called sapphire?
(Aluminium oxide or alumina, occurs naturally as ruby, sapphire)

Aluminium  is a bit like silicon; and i imagine that i could make a Al-Si-O crystalline lattice compound that would be very strong and  yet quite transparent...

 :-)

[Vincent]

Impressive stuff that :-)

But as soon as I saw the thread title I thought someone had smoked a bit too much of the funky stuff :-D

[gizz72]

Greetings,

@Blob

:-O Maybe 'Liquid Stone' can have application for Space Vehicles, if it's durable and light-wieght enough.

Regards,

Gizz

[T_Bone]

I've seen this before, it's just regular concrete with fiber optic cables running through it.

There were a few neat configurations of blocks you could get that would do neat things, like transposing the image on the other side upside down, or reversed, or even bend around objects in the wall to give the appearance that there was nothing in the wall.

What I want is a special application that I can use in my basement so that the basement walls appear to look outside as if they were at ground level. :-)

[KennyR]

Blobrana wrote:
Aluminium is a bit like silicon; and i imagine that i could make a Al-Si-O crystalline lattice compound that would be very strong and yet quite transparent...

But very brittle.

[blobrana]

hum,
i found a related article:
" Casio has announced the development of a new lens for compact cameras which is made from a transparent ceramic material instead of glass.
The material (Lumicera) was originally developed for other applications but happened to have interesting optical properties including a higher refractive index than glass. Casio has refined the process of polishing and coating the material to make lenses which can be thinner and stronger than conventional glass."

Article here.

[gizz72]

hum indeed, :-)

Hope it's scratch proof. Looks like it would also make a good eyecontacts. errm.... :roll:

Regards,

Gizz

[blobrana]

Errm....

Strangly,
As a follow-up to making a Al-Si-O crystalline lattice compound, scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time.
Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties.

The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides .