Aerogel (frozen smoke) is an exotic solid that is ultra light weight with many remarkable properties.
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A live 0.41 g Monarch butterfly sitting on the aerogel which weighs 0.83 g. Volume of the aerogel here is just on 10 cc hence it is around 80 mg/cc. At about AU$ 80 for 0.8 g, this makes it about 4 times as expensive as gold per unit weight.
Aerogel is firm to touch but will crumble with a bit of pressure.
A block of aerogel (from eBay, where else?).
A live 0.41 g Monarch butterfly sitting on the aerogel which weighs 0.83 g. Volume of the aerogel here is just on 10 cc hence it is around 80 mg/cc. At about AU$ 80 for 0.8 g, this makes it about 4 times as expensive as gold per unit weight.
Aerogel is typically 99.8% air and is is made by high temperature and pressure-critical-point drying of a gel composed of colloidal silica structural units filled with solvents. The resulting silica dioxide structure is sponge like with microporosity on a nanometer scale. It has many unusual properties including extreme lightness (as low as 3 mg/cc), excellent insulating properties (39 times better than fibreglass) and high electrical insulation (1018 Ω cm compared with glass 1015). It was discovered in the 1930’s but came into the public eye with aerospace uses including Mars Rover insulation and as a comet dust collector with Stardust 2.
It can support 4000 times its own weight.
It shows laser beams clearly just like thick smoke. This photo does not really show how clear it actually is.
Until recently this type of Aerogel was the lightest solid but there is a metal lattice that is now lighter and now a carbon nano tube version which has the Aerogel 2013 record.
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External links
Aerogel Wiki
Aerogel Google+ post: Aug 21, 2011
Aerogel 2013 record
Photo Date: 2006