The R&D folks at the US Naval Research Laboratory have once again done their best MacGyver impression, creating something impossibly cool and useful (a new type of bulletproof glass) from seemingly mundane source materials (synthetic powdered clay).
While it might not be exactly akin to taking a wad of chewed-up bubblegum and a paper clip and fashioning it into a bazooka, the NRL took the clay material, heated and pressed it under vacuum (a process also known as sintering) and turned it into durable, transparent sheets.
This material is known as Spinel, and according to lead investigator Dr. Jas Sanghera, it actually is “a mineral, it’s magnesium aluminate.” More importantly, he added, Spinel is “much tougher, stronger, harder than glass” and “can withstand sand and rain erosion.”
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