Word: kevlar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even the simple white fencing uniform is more complex than it looks. The uniformis made largely out of kevlar. Copper wires cover the target areas and points are recorded electronically because the action is often too fast for an observer to judge...
...student for student we are being outspent, most notably by our younger sister in New Haven. The average Eli receives 3, 167 more worth of goods and services from his college than you or 1. That's a lot of Kevlar and tasers...
...fusillade increased, the Rangers ripped up the bulletproof Kevlar mats from the floor of Wolcott's Black Hawk to fashion a makeshift bunker. The shield, however, provided only the barest protection, as Master Sergeant Scott Fales, 36, swiftly discovered. An Army special-forces medic who has saved 88 lives during his career, Fales was working on several wounded men when he felt himself slammed to the street. A bullet had ripped through his leg. Hunkering down next to the wreckage, he quickly bandaged the wound and then resumed tending his comrades...
...ANYONE KNOW WHAT CARbon fiber is? Modulus graphite? Boron? They used to put boron into gasoline, or at least into gasoline ads. Now it goes into wildly technological golf clubs and tennis racquets. Or is that argon? Or titanium? Neither of which is to be confused with something called Kevlar -- the stuff they make bullet-proof vests from. Kevlar these days is a very hot item. There are bulletproof Kevlar canoes, for example. And water skis. And bicycle tights. (A lie: the Kevlar bike tights, for the moment, are imaginary. But remember, you saw them here first.) The rest...
Fine-tuned by 4 billion years of evolution, protein chemistry has a lot to recommend it. To produce Kevlar, for instance, requires vats of concentrated sulfuric acid that must be maintained at high pressure. But spiders produce silk in the open air using water as a solvent. "I am absolutely fascinated," says University of Washington materials scientist Christopher Viney, "that such an incredible material starts out as a solution in water, and all the spider does is squirt it out through a small hole. In the process, proteins that were soluble turn into insoluble fibers. Now, isn't that amazing...