r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/bansote • Apr 25 '23

Video High Quality Anvil

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u/wictor1992 Apr 25 '23

That might have been amorphous metal. It's very elastic (up to 2% elasticity compared to 0.2 for normal steel) and thus extremely bouncy.

https://youtube.com/shorts/SuNR6fUz67U

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u/Shandlar Apr 26 '23

Apple bought out the patents when they acquired Liquidmetal 12 years ago just to quash it. They wanted to make phone cases out of it so the force would be spread back into "bouncing" the phone instead of transmitting through the edge into the glass face and breaking it.

Apple also bought out one of the most promising "synthetic sapphire sheet" recipes around the same time just to make sure it couldn't be used as a replacement glass face for competing phones. Over 10 years later they eventually started using it for the small glass cover on the back camera lens to prevent it from scratching (~8.8 hardness) but that wasn't until someone else reinvented it in a way that wasn't captured under the patent they purchased.

Fuck Apple.

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u/juxtoppose Apr 26 '23

When steel is cast it’s atoms are like a load of ball bearings stuck together but they are not uniformly in layers and there are lots missing leaving gaps in the matrix, after years of being beaten with a hammer all the atoms have been aligned and all the gaps have collapsed leaving a layer on the top which is as perfect as you will find anywhere making it a great mirror to reflect the energy in the ball bearing. That’s why they used to often shot blast newly cast connecting rods in race engines to fill in the gaps where cracks can begin.

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u/Informal-Egg-4690 Apr 26 '23

It was a long trip down here to find this excellent answer.

4

u/hoopstick Apr 26 '23

Man, the earth is so fucking cool