Chapter 01 of 5
The Bet: Replacing Liquid with Air
The origins of the world's lightest solid from a 1930s laboratory wager.
- The Origin
A Wager Between Friends
In 1931, chemists Samuel Kistler and Charles Learned bet to see who could remove the liquid from a jelly without causing it to shrink.
- Material Anatomy
What is a Gel?
A gel is a complex structure where a solid, porous network is completely filled with a liquid solvent.
- The Challenge
The Shrinkage Problem
If you simply evaporate the liquid from a gel, surface tension pulls the delicate solid walls inward, causing the structure to collapse.
17 more cards in this chapter
Could you answer this?
What primary physical force causes a standard gel to collapse when its liquid is evaporated?
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☁️ The Impossible Smoke of Aerogel
- 01The Bet: Replacing Liquid with AirThe origins of the world's lightest solid from a 1930s laboratory wager.
- 02Supercritical Drying & The Phase ShiftMastering the physics of heat and pressure to create 'frozen smoke.'
- 03Nanopores: The Physics of 99% AirWhy a material that is almost entirely empty space is a master insulator.
- 04Stardust & The Cosmic VacuumHow NASA used aerogel to catch high-speed particles from a comet's tail.
- 05The Future of Less: Beyond SilicaModern iterations using carbon and polymers for the next generation of materials.