Liquid Ballistic Armor? | Thehacksmith Collab 

Thanks for sending us the STF to experiment! We'll have to try some other advanced chemistry projects with you in the future! That tank armor sounds fascinating...

Fun fact: honey can be non-Newtonian depending on the flowers that went into it and a bunch of other parameters. Honey is really complicated.

"Nano[particles] son! They harden in response to physical trauma! You can't hurt me!"

According to a paper I read, 12nm is the ideal size for the silica. PEG to silica should be a 60:40 ratio and the PEG 400 benefits from a 5% addition of PEG 10,000 (possibly a higher % would be even better but studies had not been done at the time I was researching. The graph of results improved with every % addition of PEG 10,000 and the curve showed no sign of flattening, but the study stopped at 5%) and the whole mixture (including alcohol) should be sonicated for even distribution of the silica through the PEG The alcohol needs to be thoroughly evaporated off the aramid/kevlar/whatever so I would think baking it at 85c would be the way to go.

The best protection inserts for motorcycle equipment are made from materials with the same property, but more «solid» in free state, which looks like soft rubber (and doesn't restrict movement much) but becomes hard on impact and distributes impact energy on larger area.

Might be interesting to look at deflocculants. When used in pottery sodium silicate(or other silicates) can be used to turn clay liquid for casting without increasing the water contents much. That way you get pretty viscous liquid with shear thickening properties.

This is great! I always hoped body armor could be more expensive. Try mixing the opal with HP printer ink

Also, .45 is not chosen for its ability to penetrate armor. It's the worst round for penetrating armor of what is in common usage.

I had a good chuckle when you mentioned ruining glassware over a shot of a Dollarama hermetic jar. I love those things for all kinds of stuff.

Next collab: Hacksmith, *insert an American ballistics channel*, and I made a tank

The interesting thing to look at would not be penetration, but damage - getting shot wearing soft armor may not result in bullet penetration, but it can easily bruise and crack ribs. You won’t see that find of improvment in the samples you were sent though. If you wanted to measure this, a force sensitive resistor grid with peak hold will give you a great idea of how (and if) the shear thickening fluid spread out the force appreciably.

Really nice scientific technique putting an empty bag in the control sample for the clay test. Absolutely perfect, these details usually matter a lot!

Hacksmith: Hey we're making a bulletproof vest wanna help? This Guy: Yea I was just looking for a reason to make opal soup

Such a cool idea. The ooblek was one of those first experiments I did in chemistry as a child and I still think it’s one of the coolest things ever. Never knew WHY it acted that way before. Thanks for explaining!

How do you avoid the particles settling out of suspension when layering them like this?

Nanoparticles, son!

I wondered what it would take to make a suit like that work in real life, but I figured it would have to integrate some electro or magneto rheological fluids.

Yeeeahhhh the man uploaded!!!

Nanomachines son!

Hey, on your video about making synthetic opals you mentioned that there are russian research papers about the subject but they are almost never translated. If you need somebody that can do i think i can help. It would be pleasure to help with something like that

it might be significant to mention that 45 acp definitely has a kick, it is relitively slow compared to most bullets and has more of a “blunt force” sort of impact rather than “piercing”. its a larger bullet going at a (relitively) slower rate compared to something like a 9mm. so its good against soft targets, but tends to be easier to stop as well with protection.

I love how professional these videos always are. Such obvious care and effort put into each of them, and such respect for the audience. It’s just nice

HOLD UP! Are you making steel foam in a microwave? Dude you cannot be just casually hinting at making steel foam in a microwave and not tell me how to do it.

to keep it functional you have to use a liquid, as the glue prevents the compressive stacking. to do that in a vest you basicly have to make the vest out of pockets like a down jacket, so bottoming out is confined to each pocket, and make two offset layers so the seams are not weakpoints. or you use this non-newtonian rubber mixture thats used for some sports protective gear as a glue for the particles.

3:10 nanomachines son

Had this idea years ago. Glad to see it being tested😊

3:16 nanomachines, son. They harden in response to physical trauma

would shear THINNING be better at say, dampening a fall than regular viscosity water? since it would be thinner while you were accelerating and then progressively harden?

I have a less bullet stopping application. Think more of mitigating a hard punch, instead of a bullet. I wonder if PEG + corn starch + linen fabric would work as a replacement for 16g steel. I guess I'll be testing something of my own soon. While the opal looks like a lot of fun to make, I'm not set up to even attempt that here.

This is so cool. Didn't really consider that there could be non-newt liquids other than oobleck. And given that you brought it up, when do you think we can expect an update on the spider silk? Days, months, years?

ah i was waiting for this video, great collab . absolutely loved it. would love to see more collaborations

The early uses (10+ years ago now) of STF in armor were to improve stab resistance, rather than bullet resistance. Would be interesting to know if your initial attempt did that. If so, improving the stab resist without compromising bullet resist, is a pretty big win.

I'm so excited seeing all these little glimpses of your upcoming projects.

With the way you described the mechanics of it I don't think it could work as its own layer in a vest. If the shear thickening is a result of the particles jamming into each other, would a sheet of saturated fabric even have enough particles in front of a bullet to achieve the full effect? Even if it does, wouldn't the effectiveness max out around a thin sheet of opal?

This is the first video I’ve seen that actually explains how ooblek works, it’s super interesting how simple it really is

I was involved in similar testing years ago. It never resulted in being able to use less Kevlar but did show the potential to decrease back face deformation. The energy from a stopped bullet will still cause a lot of internal damage and leave you pretty messed up but if you can spread that force out over a wider area you can reduce the injuries quite a bit.

I wrote a whole paper on how novel concepts could be used to improve body armor. Sheer stiffling gel (SSG)was one of the topics i covered as well as resin based self repairing technology. One group of researchers found that carbon black could be suspended in the SSG you could sense and measure impacts based on the stiffling effect changed measured resistance acros the panel. This could be used as a monitoring device for combat medics to automatically alert them if someone receives a shot or impact that causes sever bodily harm

I use to work with silica for a ceramic core company. You could probably ad a wax to the silica mix to thicken it a little more while maintaining consistency. Also adding more durability.

I'd love to see how different movement affects the pattern. Would it work faster if you ran it in a centrifuge?

What non Newtonian fluid is typically used in these applications? What else is suitable? What do you think about using a PV (iron on glue) or silicone (polysiloxane) matrix? Isn't the long foldable molecules of starch what makes it so ooblikly? Maybe a combo of immiscible polymers in a soup as substitute would work?

Nice experiment! Thanks for sharing

Such a wonder to see both of my favourite content creators doing a collab, well done 🔥🔥

One of the designs we came up with for civilian body armor used with this was to take recycled soccer balls and fill the Hex's with plastic bags sealed with the Ballistics liquid and slide them in vests/car doors/hollow building doors, ect to make them bulletproof or bullet resistant. This is the purple dynamic fluid we had in the lab.

turns out that bullets are harmless when not shot at you

So basically, we're talking about the precursor to the shields from Dune

been thinking along the same lines, well done. i also have tested tank armour for the military and defeated the samples i was sent. I was asked to try civilian explosives first, which didn't go so well, but when i got tricky, i punched right through, with only 5-10 grams. Needless to say, the company making the armour, redesigned it.

also fun fact about your sponsor: Bismuth is radioactive, and it's halflife is more than a billion times the age of the universe.

well said friend, well spoken.

I had read about STF armor for the first time mere days before the Hacksmith video came out, and when he said you were involved I knew I'd be in for a treat as soon as your video dropped. Thanks for the awesome content!

Great to see you silk reactor project is still active !

The crossover I never knew I needed holy crap

...and your channel will explode now. Congrats 👍

nanomachines son

It is a good year when Thought Emporium posts a video! Looking forward to your next video in a year or two :P

"Nanoparticles, son! They harden in response to physical trauma."

a slow blade penetrates the shield

I read a paper where there were adding additives (ceramics) to the STF at low percentage at around 20% to 45% and it increased the protection level of it

That formal suit with the protection in it looks like something Bruce Wayne would wear.

this was a pretty cool collab

I think the issue here is the application of the fluid to the fabric. The liquid portion of the fluid may evaporate or be absorbed into the fabric. This means the suspended particles are no longer suspended, so they can't move around as they should. I think the approach is actually more similar to your demonstration of the sheer thickening effect on impact-it's in a pouch. It is contained and not absorbing into the fabric and can properly disperse the force. You may want to try pouches of the fluid sewn into a fabric. So it isn't as easily affected by gravity and can further spread out the force, perhaps the suspension could be in a gel of sorts. This would create what could be called a layer of gel. If the dispersion of the sheer thickening could be done more over time, it may offer more protection especially if it can be geared towards instantaneous impact forces in particular instead of just any force, though that's more in the realm of science fiction I should think. All in all though this would create viscosity throughout the gel layer any time you crash several kilometres from the sky after your battles with the Covenant. Seriously though ! Consider the idea. Good luck and happy hacking

Would there be any advantage to combining a magneticlly active sheer thickening fluid with some kind of pizeoelectic substance so the impact can activate the magnetic properties of the fluid?

I had the same idea, pretty cool to see someone make it in real life!

Queue writing prompt: Sci-Fi short story about the Opal Warriors, a band of idealistic mercenaries who refuse to use any weapons or be hurt by them and who strive to bring peace to the galaxy by out-nerding the bad guys 😎

I wonder if graphene nano particles would work well suspended in a fluid. I’m also now wondering what properties of the fluid might improve ballistic armor. It seems it would need to be able to hold the particles stably without dissolving them and be easily expelled under pressure. I want to learn more about it now!

"Why is this cheese opalescent" "waaaait a minute"

Experimenting with this as a child . Who thought this would be made. Awesome to see an idea I had come to life . Thanks 🙏

Basically this liquid explained in more simple terms: "Nanomachines son, they harden in response to physical trauma..."

This channel is nile red with a hint of mad scientist and I love it!

I had the exact same idea a few years back! Surprisingly, sitting on my ass didn't materialize a prototype that apparently never would've worked anyway. Thanks for helping out!

Thank you for (at least this) update on the Silk project. I do not think you mentioned it since two years ago

Filter the cornstarch to get the best particles. Then compress it with several tons of force like what is done with ceramics plates. The particles will be already in close proximity when the force of a bullet hits it. You may need a binder, which will be a small percentage of the main material.

finally, a nice video about non-newtonian fluids!

i love your voice so much, its been months since i last watched one of your videos and i still remembered it perfectly

I am so happy to see oobleck explained. I always said it was not a solution, it was a mixture but no one wanted to believe me.

0:09 EVERY LIQUID DOES THIS. WATER DOES THIS. THAT'S WHY IT HURTS TO FALL ON WATER.

Man this is really superb work.

This channel is so much fun! Guys how about you clone yourself four times and then split for for additional projects so we can get 4 times the amount of cool chemistry videos?!

You are the perfect team to dismis a thought I had some time ago related to this topic. What if you have metalic material that can with the help of circuits that predoct where the bulet will come from will excite and push the liquid metal towards the bulet and reduce the speed near zero. Can this be done?

3:16 "Nanoparticles, son! They harden in response to physical trauma!" Didn't know Metal Gear Rising is so true to real life.

Congrats on 1 mil bud!

So stoked you're back to making videos!

This reminds me a lot of applications that d3o is currently being used for including motorcycle armor (padding) and trauma pads under body armor (to dissipate the force and lessen, well, trauma from a successfully stopped bullet).

Will there be a part 2 to this soon

Cue the Dune body shields, but everyone looks like the Michelin man.

so thats how scout made the mad milk

YES... PLEASE think of the lives you can save!

hmmm... maybe with thicker layer of shear-thickening fluid the force could be spread out more?

I love how you just casually mention you're working on microwaveable tank armor, that sums up the channel so well XD

I hope I'm not mistaken but I think the fluid used in official stab vests is Polyethylene Glycol or Polyglycerin with silica particles. the particle and polymer sizes are a trade secret.

Congrats on the 1M subs, Justin!

Shear thickening is the sort of armor field used in Dune.

why does my milk taste weird This guy: nanoparticles

im so happy youre uploading again 😭

I was really interested in the sheer thickening fluid treated textile part of the bulletproof suit video because it was the only part of the project that seemed really... experimental? I mean, yeah, if you use enough kevlar you can stop a bullet, but we already knew that. And in the end they had to use quiet a bit of kevlar. What they ended up with looked less like a tailor-made suit and more like soft body armor that had been stitched to resemble the shape of a suit jacket.

I am making sure not to consume cornstarch as I don’t want to get plugged up 😂😂😂

Amazing work!

Good to see that you're growing

I'd be looking into classifying the variance in particle sizes produced during synthesis, and exploring methods to selectively grow specific denominations to avoid advanced filtration techniques.

English - Latin/Greek Shear thickening - dilatant/rheopectic. Shear thinning - pseudoplastic/thixotropic. Thanks for not insisting on the Latin or Greek! Example of thixotropism - "Shake and shake the ketchup bottle. First none'll come, and then a lot'll."

I wonder how well this stuff does in the environmental extremes of the vacuum of space.