I've been looking for an amorphous metal demonstrator off and on for a few years but with no success.
There are some samples of amorphous metals available on ebay, but I really don't have any idea of what those metals actually are, whether they're really the zirconium-beryllium-titanium-copper-nickel alloy that Steve describes at 7:10 in this above video.
This video sees Steve explore how to optimize the bounces - which material should the ball bearing be made from, how big should the ball bearing be, how can you measure the number of bounces most easily - which is cute, but the big payoff in the video comes after around 10:00 when Steve explains how materials plastically deform and why amorphous metals don't easily deform plastically.
That's absolutely fascinating, and I even more desperately want one of these atomic trampoline demonstrators.
Feel free to hunt one down and buy me one for Christmas. I'll happily give you my address if you do get ahold of one.
Now I'm curious how an amorphous metal would respond to a hardness test. Would it be much tougher to create a traditional 'dent' from a hardness tester?
(In hunting down more info on amorphous metals, I might've found a preliminary answer to that one on the LiquidMetal website, scroll down partway to find hardness data.)
Here's more info about amorphous metals and a video from Grand Illusions, from whom Steve borrowed his atomic trampoline demonstrator.
- MRSEC at UWisconsin - amorphous metal page
- LiquidMetal - the trade name under which the amorphous metal is available
- A white paper about the Atomic Trampoline from UWisconsin & Arthur Ellis
- LiquidMetal's wikipedia article
- "The Case for Bulk Metallic Glass" paper from Science Direct
- A white paper from Taylor Edge electronics about metallic glasses and the atomic trampoline demonstrator
- Information about vitreloy, a different commercial name under which metallic glass has been available
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