Wired is running a cool pictorial on the new amorphous metal making techniques. These “metallic glass” materials have some amazing properties for making long lasting structures. Back in 01997 or so we tested some of these metals as pendulum flexures (as seen above). In fact there is still test pendulum hanging on one of these here at our museum. At the time however the techniques for making metallic glass limited the material to only very thin strips, and were still prone to spiral type fracturing which kept us from using it in torsional pendulums. It looks like this new technique has a kind of hybrid molecular structure, that works similarly to a composite, and stops that type of fracturing. Very cool. Cant wait to get my hands on some…
