A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 3 5 0 STRESS RELIEF ‘OREOLOGY’ GIVES SWEET MEASUREMENTS Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wanted to know why the cream from an Oreo cookie sticks to one side when twisted apart. To find out, they put the cookies through a battery of tests to understand how the non-Newtonian material flows when twisted, pressed, or otherwise stressed. Using standard rheology equipment, the researchers also measured the torque required to twist open an Oreo and found it to be similar to the torque required to turn a doorknob and about 1/10th what’s needed to twist open a bottlecap. The cream’s failure stress, the force per area required to get the cream to flow, or deform, is twice that of cream cheese and peanut butter, and about the same magnitude as mozzarella cheese. The study, “On Oreology, the Fracture and Flow of ‘Milk’s Favorite Cookie,’” appears in Kitchen Flows, a special issue of the journal Physics of Fluids. The understanding gained from the properties of Oreo cream could potentially be applied to the design of other complex fluid materials. “My 3D printing fluids are in the same class of materials as Oreo cream,” says Crystal Owens, MIT mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate. “So, this new understanding can help me better design ink when I’m trying to print flexible electronics from a slurry of carbon nanotubes, because they deform in almost exactly the same way.” mit.edu. While most cream layers failed adhesively, cookies exposed to adverse conditions may cause cream to spread from its initial manufactured state, and then cohesive failure was typical. Courtesy of MIT. A composite resin suitable for making wind turbine blades could be recycled into a variety of products, including these gummy bears. Courtesy of John Dorgan. Researchers are studying sea slugs in e orts to teach AI systems. Courtesy of Chad King/NOAA Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. FROM WIND TURBINE BLADE TO GUMMY BEAR A new composite resin that can be used to create wind turbine blades can also later be recycled into a variety of other products, including countertops, car taillights, diapers, and even gummy bears. “The beauty of our resin system is that at the end of its use cycle, we can dissolve it, and that releases it from whatever matrix it’s in so that it can be used over and over again in an infinite loop,” says John Dorgan, professor at Michigan State University. Dorgan and colleagues made the new turbine material by combining glass fibers with a plant-derived polymer and a synthetic one. Panels made of this thermoplastic resin were strong and durable enough to be used in turbines or automobiles. The researchers dissolved the panels in fresh monomer and physically removed the glass fibers, allowing them to recast the material into new products of the same type. The recast panels had the same physical properties as their predecessors. msu.edu. IS AI SMARTER THAN A SEA SLUG? Scientists from Purdue University, Rutgers University, the University of Georgia, and the U.S. DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory have studied sea slugs to glean information they can use in artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. They found that a material can mimic the sea slug’s most essential intelligence features. The discovery is a step toward building hardware that could help make AI more efficient and reliable for technology ranging from self-driving cars and surgical robots to social media algorithms. Two main signs of intelligence that neuroscientists have learned from sea slugs are habituation and sensitization. In this study, the researchers found a way to demonstrate both habituation and sensitization in nickel oxide, a quantummaterial. www.anl.gov.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTYyMzk3NQ==