Meta Monday

   Hello and welcome to Meta Monday Today we’ll see ·           What are they ·           A brief History ·           The idea What are they Yes, it is just like it sounds, materials that can be programmed to behave in a specific way (i.e., it has the ability to change its physical properties like shape, density, conductivity etc.) under certain conditions like temperature, pressure, etc. A brief History Toffoli and Margolus coined the term ‘programmable matter’ originally in 1991 to refer to a group of very small computing elements arranged in a particular way. Then as semiconductors, nanotechnology advanced, it gave way to a broader class of materials, to include not only those which can be arranged spatially but can also change their properties in a predetermined way. Then in 2002, the Claytronics project was started at the Carnegie Mellon U...

  Most of us have heard or read somewhere about aerogel as the lightest material on the planet. But do you know the other properties that it exhibits? Let us know more about the properties and various applications of aerogel and what makes it the lightest material on earth. What are Aerogels? Aerogels are extremely light translucent solid materials, which are created by combining a polymer with a solvent to form a gel using sol-gel method, and then removing the liquid from the gel and replacing it with air. These are extremely porous and very low in density and are considered one of the finest insulation materials. Out of all known solid porous materials, aerogels are particularly known for their small pore size, large specific surface area, and best optical transmission. Aerogel contains a lot of surface area due to its nanoscale sponge like structure. An Ice cube size piece of aerogel has half the area of a football fiel...