#shock absorbtion

[thatchainsguy]

I did this on accident in practice (was actually trying to catch the post with one foot for a birdcage split) and now my director wants me to duplicate it on purpose. I was landing it pretty well over the big crash mat, but when I switched to our regular floor, my weight shifted forward too much. More work to do!

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Liquid shock absorbers

Remarkable liquid materials called colloids stiffen under impact. Researchers funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation have studied the effect of powerful impacts such as those produced by firearms or micrometeorites.

At first glance, colloids resemble homogeneous liquids such as milk or blood plasma. But in fact they consist of particles in suspension. Some colloids have remarkable properties: they may stiffen following an impact and absorb surface shocks. This property is of interest for many applications, from bulletproof vests to protective shields for satellites. Researchers funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) found that how these colloids work can change dramatically in response to very strong impacts. The scientists have also developed a model that makes these properties easier to understand. The work has been published in the journal PNAS.

SNSF professor Lucio Isa and his team at ETH Zurich create so-called two-dimensional colloidal crystals. The crystals consist of silica beads several thousandths of a millimetre in diameter in a mixture of water and glycerine. In collaboration with Chiara Daraio of Caltech and Stéphane Job at the Institut supérieur de mécanique de Paris, the researchers studied how this type of material absorbs shocks.

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