Incredible Memory Metal
February 6th, 2008
Nitinol is an awesome alloy of nickel and titanium that can be made to return to a fixed shape no matter how twist or bent it becomes. We should definitely start making cars out of this stuff – then a pot of hot water would be enough to fix even the most crumpled wreck!
Hat tip to Hayden at It’s Alive!
Entry Filed under: Awesome Science Videos
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41 Comments
1. C21h30o2i | February 10th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I think It’s great. endless possibilities. thx for sharing.
C21h30o2i
2. Charles London | February 10th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Wow! I could sleep with my glasses on
if they were made of Nitinol.
3. Frank the SciencePunk | February 10th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Actually, one of the most popular uses of nitinol is in spectacle frames! As well as more boring-yet-worthy things such as surgical implants.
4. God | February 10th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
They have had eyeglasses frames made out of it for about 15 years. It’s called Flexon. Maybe you kids should get off the computer and experience the world. n00bs
5. linux750 | February 10th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
why AREN’T we making cars out of this stuff?
6. Nick | February 11th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Well, I bet the reason they don’t make cars out of it is because it’s obviously not as cheap as steel/aluminum/plastic. Unless you have a few hundred thousand dollars (at least) laying around, I doubt you could get a car made of this. Still, this stuff would be very cool to have. How do they make it remember a specific shape and how do you change that?
7. Simon | February 11th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Nitinol only does this shape-memory trick when it’s in wire form. That’s why you can make glasses frames out of it, but if you pounded it out into sheet metal to make a car out of it, you’d just end up with an expensive car.
8. Simon | February 11th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Oh, one other thing: you can make thin ribbons out of the stuff, too, but anything too thick or wide is still right out.
9. zero-kill | February 11th, 2008 at 6:32 am
@Simon: Thus a fabric weave method would work, and the cost would go down with the “appropriate” authorities behind the process. All you would need is an industrial weaving machine and you’ll have yourself a nice light sheet of Nitinol.
10. Bosco | February 11th, 2008 at 8:08 am
#5 because once you sat your fat ass down the bottom would drag across the roadway heating the metal and turning your bum into sizzling bacon.
11. Soem Random Idiot | February 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Lol, If they make cars out of it it would really suck. Imagine your wrecked car, now you pour water over it and it shuffles around and goes back to it’s original state, but what about all the things that were inside? Whey would get all squished and wet because all the shuffling.
12. VRo | February 11th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
@Nick: To cause nitinol to “remember” a shape, one heats it to a specific (high) temperature while holding it in said shape. Then you can cool it down and mess with it. To restore it to the remembered state, you heat it to a certain (low) threshold temperature and it will go back to its remembered state.
13. BobJoe | February 12th, 2008 at 1:34 am
About the car thing:
Even if it ‘worked’ it would still have to be strong – this simply can’t withstand the forces other things can.
Sure, your car might be dent-free, but personally I would rather have a dented car and a non-shredded body.
14. Workablob | February 13th, 2008 at 4:54 am
I saw this over 20 years ago on the Tonight Show.
They had a paper clip made out of it.
I said “Wow, Make cars outta this.”
If it were feasible and practical they would have done it.
15. R pentecost | February 13th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Other uses have been heart stents, braces for teeth, bone replacement therapy and “bullet proof” couplers for aircraft fluid controls, to name but a few. The bounds are unfathomable, interestingly it was discovered, like Teflon and microwave heat, by pure accident! As a mechanic, please give up on the cars.
16. roon | February 13th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
its 50% Nickel and 50% Titanium. Try to think of the cost and weight of a car made of this stuff.
17. imnsane | February 13th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Buckminster Fuller described such nickel based materials over 30 years ago and several applications such as compressed telescopes fired into space to late restore to full design shape.
18. pRokA | February 14th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
This metal is awesome.
19. fenderflip | February 17th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
That guy up here calling himself God is a retard. But, then again, so are people who leave comments on blogs… :/
20. Selim Cillov | February 20th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Has anybody noticed the website it’s from?
Grand illusions?
You’re a bunch of retards!!
21. Henrik | February 20th, 2008 at 6:24 am
So, how did he bend the wire into “HOT” and make it remember that state in the first place?
22. Gina | February 20th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
When I had braces, they were made out of this. It was great, because I never had to get them tightened. Because a mouth is warm, the metal held its shape. But, if my teeth hurt, I could swish cold water in my mouth and it would just kind of sit on my teeth.
Great stuff.
23. Lawrence | February 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 am
To #2, There is a metal that is even more flexible and is in common use under the trade name Flexon, sold by a company called Marchon. All the parts subject to damage by bending are made of this metal. Other companies market “memory” metal eyeglass frames legally or not.
Former Optician
24. Lawrence | February 22nd, 2008 at 4:23 am
#2 I should have mentioned there is an even better metal for eyeglass frames called beta-titanium. It is light as a feather, non-corrosive, nickel allergy free, and of course flexible.
25. JL | February 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 am
He sounds like hannibal lecter.
26. punked | February 25th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I think you all just got punked. If the wire was bent in a specific way so that the trigger point of the metal has a little bit of pressure and the help of a magnet beneath it. It will mexican jumping bean itself to the shape it is supposed to have. I mean come on haven’t you ever gotten bored and bent a paper clip into a shape that when just a little bit of pressure was applied it would flip into a different shape. I call shenanigans on this one!
27. Morefunforme | February 25th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Actually, this is very true. I saw this in a Popular Science Magazine I once had..its a common thing these days…and has been for many years now. “Memory wire” I have heard it called, also very useful in robotics.
I found it all over the net
http://www.smallparts.com/products/descriptions/nw.cfm
28. Matt | February 25th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This reminds me of the material they found in Roswell after the crash. You could crinkle it up and it returned to it’s original shape.
That was before the government got there though.
29. shawn | February 25th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Looks like magic to me
30. dustin | February 26th, 2008 at 6:20 am
I’ve been to the factory. It works well but is way to flexible to be used in auto applications. Most of your pull out cell phone antennas were made from it. It has three states cold-bend to new state,middle-return to hot shape, and hot-form into permanent shape.
31. Lorenzo | February 28th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Hi,
I saw many talking about making a car out of this stuff.
Here are the reasons that would make this difficult:
1.currently car building processes are all cold process of bending and shaping the pieces of metal that make up the car (witch are afterwards soldiered together) to build a car with the amount of heat required would be more expensive than to make a new car.
2. this material is very sensitive to thermal dilatation, you might end up having cracks in your car after a cold winter or warm summer if there are any even minimum design or assembly flaws.
3.this material is expensive to extract and produce, and there is not so much around as iron or alluminium
4.this alloy is very hard to soldier, increasing production cost (compared to iron witch can be assembled very easily)
And here is why it would be a bad idea:
1.when you get in to an accident a lot of dynamic power is absorbed by the car chassis when it bends and crushes, many cars are designed to absorb as much of this by crushing and bending as much as possible to reduce shock on the passengers, this alloy is far too rigid to accomplish this, and a whole lot more energy would end up impacting on the passengers.
2.figure this, a person gets in a car wreck and he is stuck inside the car with all the car bent and warped around him, and now a small spark ignites some fuel that was spilled (not much just enough to make a small fire) that allows the metal to reach “memory temperature”, then the metal bends back and wound even further the passenger.
These of course are only speculations as no such car has ever been built, and i’m not excluding that some of these issues might be solved trough design.
32. Patriot | March 9th, 2008 at 11:54 am
#20,
The site this is from is Grand Illusions, yes, but there IS such a material, with the mentioned properties. Look up Google before pointing out useless details.
#28
The government denies anything being found at Rosewell.
Also the only witnesses are a baffled farmer, who described it was sheet metal.
So that’s out of the question.
33. Andrew | April 1st, 2008 at 6:47 am
@20 &29:
This stuff is used in a few magic tricks, where the wire “mysteriously” bends into a prediction.
34. Cyanide | April 25th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I work in an opticians, this stuff is awesome.
Once when I was showing a customer the memory metal frames, I bent them and they snapped at the bridge =/
He still bought them though =]
35. Frank the SciencePunk | April 25th, 2008 at 9:52 am
LOL!
36. Vicki | May 20th, 2008 at 5:02 am
They use stuff like this in braces. If the wire in the braces bends, it goes back to shape under hot water. Must have something to do with how the braces work :)
37. Harry Roberts | June 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I’d hazard a guess at it not being strong enough to make cars from. An alloy which can be bent so easily probably isn’t suited to housing a one tonne car travelling at 70mph…
38. David Sutton | June 17th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I designed an engine made from a long nitinol spring wrapped around two pulleys 28 years ago only to find out it was patented while I was building it. ( by someone I had discussed my thoughts to 0
39. South African/Serbian | June 25th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
That sucks dude! :(
40. DaviDC. | July 6th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Twenty five years ago this technology was going to bring about all sorts of new & useful things. Where are they?
41. zainabxxx | January 4th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
i think memory metal is stupid and confusing!!!! who cares about it!!! im not going to waste my time talking about metal!!!! x
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