Thanks for sending us the STF to experiment! We'll have to try some other advanced chemistry projects with you in the future! That tank armor sounds fascinating...

Fun fact: honey can be non-Newtonian depending on the flowers that went into it and a bunch of other parameters. Honey is really complicated.

"Nano[particles] son! They harden in response to physical trauma! You can't hurt me!"

The best protection inserts for motorcycle equipment are made from materials with the same property, but more «solid» in free state, which looks like soft rubber (and doesn't restrict movement much) but becomes hard on impact and distributes impact energy on larger area.

According to a paper I read, 12nm is the ideal size for the silica. PEG to silica should be a 60:40 ratio and the PEG 400 benefits from a 5% addition of PEG 10,000 (possibly a higher % would be even better but studies had not been done at the time I was researching. The graph of results improved with every % addition of PEG 10,000 and the curve showed no sign of flattening, but the study stopped at 5%) and the whole mixture (including alcohol) should be sonicated for even distribution of the silica through the PEG The alcohol needs to be thoroughly evaporated off the aramid/kevlar/whatever so I would think baking it at 85c would be the way to go.

Might be interesting to look at deflocculants. When used in pottery sodium silicate(or other silicates) can be used to turn clay liquid for casting without increasing the water contents much. That way you get pretty viscous liquid with shear thickening properties.

Also, .45 is not chosen for its ability to penetrate armor. It's the worst round for penetrating armor of what is in common usage.

Next collab: Hacksmith, *insert an American ballistics channel*, and I made a tank

This is great! I always hoped body armor could be more expensive. Try mixing the opal with HP printer ink

I had a good chuckle when you mentioned ruining glassware over a shot of a Dollarama hermetic jar. I love those things for all kinds of stuff.

How do you avoid the particles settling out of suspension when layering them like this?

Really nice scientific technique putting an empty bag in the control sample for the clay test. Absolutely perfect, these details usually matter a lot!

The interesting thing to look at would not be penetration, but damage - getting shot wearing soft armor may not result in bullet penetration, but it can easily bruise and crack ribs. You won’t see that find of improvment in the samples you were sent though. If you wanted to measure this, a force sensitive resistor grid with peak hold will give you a great idea of how (and if) the shear thickening fluid spread out the force appreciably.

Nanoparticles, son!

Such a cool idea. The ooblek was one of those first experiments I did in chemistry as a child and I still think it’s one of the coolest things ever. Never knew WHY it acted that way before. Thanks for explaining!

"Nanoparticles, son! They harden in response to physical trauma."

I wondered what it would take to make a suit like that work in real life, but I figured it would have to integrate some electro or magneto rheological fluids.

Hacksmith: Hey we're making a bulletproof vest wanna help? This Guy: Yea I was just looking for a reason to make opal soup

Yeeeahhhh the man uploaded!!!

Nanomachines son!

it might be significant to mention that 45 acp definitely has a kick, it is relitively slow compared to most bullets and has more of a “blunt force” sort of impact rather than “piercing”. its a larger bullet going at a (relitively) slower rate compared to something like a 9mm. so its good against soft targets, but tends to be easier to stop as well with protection.

Hey, on your video about making synthetic opals you mentioned that there are russian research papers about the subject but they are almost never translated. If you need somebody that can do i think i can help. It would be pleasure to help with something like that

would shear THINNING be better at say, dampening a fall than regular viscosity water? since it would be thinner while you were accelerating and then progressively harden?

3:16 nanomachines, son. They harden in response to physical trauma

I love how professional these videos always are. Such obvious care and effort put into each of them, and such respect for the audience. It’s just nice

3:10 nanomachines son

to keep it functional you have to use a liquid, as the glue prevents the compressive stacking. to do that in a vest you basicly have to make the vest out of pockets like a down jacket, so bottoming out is confined to each pocket, and make two offset layers so the seams are not weakpoints. or you use this non-newtonian rubber mixture thats used for some sports protective gear as a glue for the particles.

This is the first video I’ve seen that actually explains how ooblek works, it’s super interesting how simple it really is

The early uses (10+ years ago now) of STF in armor were to improve stab resistance, rather than bullet resistance. Would be interesting to know if your initial attempt did that. If so, improving the stab resist without compromising bullet resist, is a pretty big win.

I have a less bullet stopping application. Think more of mitigating a hard punch, instead of a bullet. I wonder if PEG + corn starch + linen fabric would work as a replacement for 16g steel. I guess I'll be testing something of my own soon. While the opal looks like a lot of fun to make, I'm not set up to even attempt that here.

With the way you described the mechanics of it I don't think it could work as its own layer in a vest. If the shear thickening is a result of the particles jamming into each other, would a sheet of saturated fabric even have enough particles in front of a bullet to achieve the full effect? Even if it does, wouldn't the effectiveness max out around a thin sheet of opal?

This is so cool. Didn't really consider that there could be non-newt liquids other than oobleck. And given that you brought it up, when do you think we can expect an update on the spider silk? Days, months, years?

Had this idea years ago. Glad to see it being tested😊

I'm so excited seeing all these little glimpses of your upcoming projects.

ah i was waiting for this video, great collab . absolutely loved it. would love to see more collaborations

What non Newtonian fluid is typically used in these applications? What else is suitable? What do you think about using a PV (iron on glue) or silicone (polysiloxane) matrix? Isn't the long foldable molecules of starch what makes it so ooblikly? Maybe a combo of immiscible polymers in a soup as substitute would work?

hmmm... maybe with thicker layer of shear-thickening fluid the force could be spread out more?

I am so happy to see oobleck explained. I always said it was not a solution, it was a mixture but no one wanted to believe me.

"Why is this cheese opalescent" "waaaait a minute"

Nice experiment! Thanks for sharing

if you know your way around the bad neighbourhoods of the citadel, some krogan merchants will sell you SOTA non-newtonian armor, but they might not have your size

The crossover I never knew I needed holy crap

Would there be any advantage to combining a magneticlly active sheer thickening fluid with some kind of pizeoelectic substance so the impact can activate the magnetic properties of the fluid?

So stoked you're back to making videos!

This makes me curious what the difference in penetration would be when shooting a tub of water big enough to catch a bullet, vs one filled wih this ooblek stuff.

this was a pretty cool collab

I wrote a whole paper on how novel concepts could be used to improve body armor. Sheer stiffling gel (SSG)was one of the topics i covered as well as resin based self repairing technology. One group of researchers found that carbon black could be suspended in the SSG you could sense and measure impacts based on the stiffling effect changed measured resistance acros the panel. This could be used as a monitoring device for combat medics to automatically alert them if someone receives a shot or impact that causes sever bodily harm

finally, a nice video about non-newtonian fluids!

It is a good year when Thought Emporium posts a video! Looking forward to your next video in a year or two :P

Great to see you silk reactor project is still active !

I had the exact same idea a few years back! Surprisingly, sitting on my ass didn't materialize a prototype that apparently never would've worked anyway. Thanks for helping out!

I wonder if graphene nano particles would work well suspended in a fluid. I’m also now wondering what properties of the fluid might improve ballistic armor. It seems it would need to be able to hold the particles stably without dissolving them and be easily expelled under pressure. I want to learn more about it now!

This channel is so much fun! Guys how about you clone yourself four times and then split for for additional projects so we can get 4 times the amount of cool chemistry videos?!

...and your channel will explode now. Congrats 👍

Basically this liquid explained in more simple terms: "Nanomachines son, they harden in response to physical trauma..."

Such a wonder to see both of my favourite content creators doing a collab, well done 🔥🔥

You're working on a spinning machine for spider silk? Oh boy I hope you make a vid on that once it's done!

Experimenting with this as a child . Who thought this would be made. Awesome to see an idea I had come to life . Thanks 🙏

That formal suit with the protection in it looks like something Bruce Wayne would wear.

I had the same idea, pretty cool to see someone make it in real life!

HOLD UP! Are you making steel foam in a microwave? Dude you cannot be just casually hinting at making steel foam in a microwave and not tell me how to do it.

i love your voice so much, its been months since i last watched one of your videos and i still remembered it perfectly

Finally after that Hacksmith video I knew this was coming but couldn't wait!

3:16 "Nanoparticles, son! They harden in response to physical trauma!" Didn't know Metal Gear Rising is so true to real life.

Cue the Dune body shields, but everyone looks like the Michelin man.

I had read about STF armor for the first time mere days before the Hacksmith video came out, and when he said you were involved I knew I'd be in for a treat as soon as your video dropped. Thanks for the awesome content!

shouldve used the nanomachines meme when you said nanoparticles at 3:16!

I love how you just casually mention you're working on microwaveable tank armor, that sums up the channel so well XD

been thinking along the same lines, well done. i also have tested tank armour for the military and defeated the samples i was sent. I was asked to try civilian explosives first, which didn't go so well, but when i got tricky, i punched right through, with only 5-10 grams. Needless to say, the company making the armour, redesigned it.

why does my milk taste weird This guy: nanoparticles

I was involved in similar testing years ago. It never resulted in being able to use less Kevlar but did show the potential to decrease back face deformation. The energy from a stopped bullet will still cause a lot of internal damage and leave you pretty messed up but if you can spread that force out over a wider area you can reduce the injuries quite a bit.

This particular arrangement is most effective in preventing penetration by knives or ice picks.

Thank you for (at least this) update on the Silk project. I do not think you mentioned it since two years ago

Nanoparticles son! They harden in response to physical trauma

Good to see that you're growing

I'd love to see how different movement affects the pattern. Would it work faster if you ran it in a centrifuge?

Congrats on the 1M subs, Justin!

Nano-~machines~particles, son. They harden in response to impact.

nanomachines son

I played around with infused "truck bed liner plastic" in between ballistic nylon about 1/4 inch. When tested within a few days of make; results were not super. Happened across the samples months later and they were much more harder, have yet to test them--easy to make. My thought is to have two plates with the first deforming the bullet and second plate stopping it. Possible poor mans armor.

1:13 honey is actually shear-thinning fluid, not newtonian one.

I hope I'm not mistaken but I think the fluid used in official stab vests is Polyethylene Glycol or Polyglycerin with silica particles. the particle and polymer sizes are a trade secret.

I think the issue here is the application of the fluid to the fabric. The liquid portion of the fluid may evaporate or be absorbed into the fabric. This means the suspended particles are no longer suspended, so they can't move around as they should. I think the approach is actually more similar to your demonstration of the sheer thickening effect on impact-it's in a pouch. It is contained and not absorbing into the fabric and can properly disperse the force. You may want to try pouches of the fluid sewn into a fabric. So it isn't as easily affected by gravity and can further spread out the force, perhaps the suspension could be in a gel of sorts. This would create what could be called a layer of gel. If the dispersion of the sheer thickening could be done more over time, it may offer more protection especially if it can be geared towards instantaneous impact forces in particular instead of just any force, though that's more in the realm of science fiction I should think. All in all though this would create viscosity throughout the gel layer any time you crash several kilometres from the sky after your battles with the Covenant. Seriously though ! Consider the idea. Good luck and happy hacking

On your clay block rest shouldn't you compare shear thickening fluid to Newtonian fluid as well?

Now I want to see this in a sandwiched brigandine made of dragon scale bullet resistant armor, overlapping 1 to 5 scales each layer. Yepp, hell of a lot heavier, probably, but the impact area could be huge, thus very manageable when hit by multiple projectiles.

Making armor out of shear thickening fluid is essentially the real world equivalent of the personal shields from dune.

it's like in the movie "Idiocracy" only that instead of every scientist working on erection prolonging, it's all about mass shootings in the US

3:10 Nanomachines, son

And when we needed him most, he returned

A _huge_ kudos for the Rorschach reference 😁👍

3:36 i LOVED that!

Imagine a suit made from the spidersilk that's got the opal sheer fluid treated under armour

Shear thickening is the sort of armor field used in Dune.

Congrats on 1 mil bud!

Very interesting concept!

Nice collabs!

Ooo, Microwave ruby tank armor! Can't wait

How do non-Newtonian fluids react in super absorbent polymers? Instead of trying to impregnate the kevlar with the shear thickening fluid can it be used as a padding layer on the inside to distribute the impact? Think diaper lining saturated with STF on the inside of the suit.

This is funny. I had this idea 20+ years ago in grade school XD haha

So, to create a shear-thickening elastomer, would it be as easy as adding nanoparticles (corn starch or silica (opal)) to some hardware store silicone? I'm thinking something similar to D3O's motorcycle pads. Maybe an interesting project?