You Can Thank Chemist Stephanie Kwolek for Bulletproof Vests and Yoga Pants
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovatio...180972948/
EXCERPT: There’s a pile of fibers that Stephanie Kwolek helped invent. She laid the groundwork for NomexⓇ, the flame-resistant nylon-like material used in firefighters’ suits. She was involved in the development of spandex (LycraⓇ). But her most famous, most impactful science came when she cooked up a thin soup of polymers that could stop bullets in their tracks.
Kwolek’s initial ambition was not to be chemist at all [...] After her father passed away, Kwolek cared for her younger brother while their mother looked for work. She said in an interview, “I did a lot of things. I didn’t start out to be a chemist. I was going to be a fashion designer, and that’s what I did as a child. I spent hours drawing, and so forth.” But, Kwolek’s mother commented that her daughter was “too much of a perfectionist” to work full-time in fashion.
[...] Ten years into her permanent career as a chemist, Kwolek was cooking up synthetic fibers in search of a replacement for the steel used in tires ... What Kwolek came up with was thin, opaque, and milky. This solution was so alien that the scientist running the spinneret ... was afraid Kwolek’s stuff would break their machine. ... What she had made was stiff, five times stronger than steel, and resistant to fire.
That group eventually refined Kwolek’s work into Kevlar, an invention credited with saving thousands of lives and making DuPont billions of dollars. Though her invention is used in everything from bullet-proof vests to tennis rackets, sneakers, and even snare drums, Kwolek signed away the patent royalties to the company. She was compensated with a Lavoisier Medal, an award DuPont gives to employees for outstanding contributions. Kwolek is the only woman to have ever received the award. (MORE - details, images, video)
(video) Why Einstein's General Relativity cannot be quite right (Sabine Hossenfelder)
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08...neral.html
EXCERPT: . . . General Relativity is an extremely well-confirmed theory. [...] So, there is no doubt that General Relativity works extremely well. But we already know that it cannot ultimately be the correct theory for space and time. It is an approximation that works in many circumstances, but fails in others. We know this because General Relativity does not fit together with another extremely well confirmed theory, that is quantum mechanics. It’s one of these problems that’s easy to explain but extremely difficult to solve...
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Ov98y_DCvRY
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovatio...180972948/
EXCERPT: There’s a pile of fibers that Stephanie Kwolek helped invent. She laid the groundwork for NomexⓇ, the flame-resistant nylon-like material used in firefighters’ suits. She was involved in the development of spandex (LycraⓇ). But her most famous, most impactful science came when she cooked up a thin soup of polymers that could stop bullets in their tracks.
Kwolek’s initial ambition was not to be chemist at all [...] After her father passed away, Kwolek cared for her younger brother while their mother looked for work. She said in an interview, “I did a lot of things. I didn’t start out to be a chemist. I was going to be a fashion designer, and that’s what I did as a child. I spent hours drawing, and so forth.” But, Kwolek’s mother commented that her daughter was “too much of a perfectionist” to work full-time in fashion.
[...] Ten years into her permanent career as a chemist, Kwolek was cooking up synthetic fibers in search of a replacement for the steel used in tires ... What Kwolek came up with was thin, opaque, and milky. This solution was so alien that the scientist running the spinneret ... was afraid Kwolek’s stuff would break their machine. ... What she had made was stiff, five times stronger than steel, and resistant to fire.
That group eventually refined Kwolek’s work into Kevlar, an invention credited with saving thousands of lives and making DuPont billions of dollars. Though her invention is used in everything from bullet-proof vests to tennis rackets, sneakers, and even snare drums, Kwolek signed away the patent royalties to the company. She was compensated with a Lavoisier Medal, an award DuPont gives to employees for outstanding contributions. Kwolek is the only woman to have ever received the award. (MORE - details, images, video)
(video) Why Einstein's General Relativity cannot be quite right (Sabine Hossenfelder)
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08...neral.html
EXCERPT: . . . General Relativity is an extremely well-confirmed theory. [...] So, there is no doubt that General Relativity works extremely well. But we already know that it cannot ultimately be the correct theory for space and time. It is an approximation that works in many circumstances, but fails in others. We know this because General Relativity does not fit together with another extremely well confirmed theory, that is quantum mechanics. It’s one of these problems that’s easy to explain but extremely difficult to solve...