What is metallic glass? - Ashwini Bharathula 

"This will work once we figure out how to make it work." The optimism of the inventor. (Not knocking it; just find it amusing.)

This video is relatively misleading. See, some of the strongest materials are plastics. Kevlar is plastic or polymer, yet it can stop a bullet. Same goes for UHMWPE or ultra high molecular weight polyetylene, which is one of the strongest and lightest fibers. Plastics however lack compressive strength, which is required for making the buildings and other structural things. Metals on the other hand usually have both tensile strength (regular strength) and compressive strength, but are heavy. Metals also have the ability of easily being machinable and ability to be welded. Plastics can also be welded, but it's usually much harder. This means that metals can be constructed somewhat modulary, while plastics are usually stuck in the shape they were made at originally. Metallic glass is usually very elastic, but they behave more like ceramics than like metals. While metals can bend and deform when under stress, metallic glass will usually deform slightly, and then crack. Metallic glass is also impossible to weld with current technology. And sometimes, when you heat them, they will loose their glass like properties and become like regular metals or alloys. This means that metallic glasses are similar to plastics in that they can't be welded, and similar to ceramics in that they are more likely to crack than to deform. And now to answer the big question "why aren't all materials replaced with metallic glass?" the answer is simple. Other materials do the better job. See sometimes you need electrical resistance of plastics, because you don't want electricity to leak everywhere. Also, plastics are super light, while metallic glasses aren't. Plastics and simple alloys are easy to manufacture, and metallic glasses aren't. By now, there is no need to transition to metallic glasses. I hope this clears up some of the misconceptions.

I remember reading about Liquidmetal years ago, how it was stronger than titanium and as easy to mold as plastic, and how it was going to revolutionize everything. It barely showed up in a few golf clubs and tennis rackets.

Scientists are forced to make metallic glasses It's because that damn Black Panther is hoarding all the Vibranium

i steel don't get it...

i'm studying ceramics, so "steel is strong and hard" is something i almost never hear. anything that has any kind of plasticity below 200°C i always considered "soft" funny how you forget about the scales of things like that in real life, when you've been inside the specialised bubble of your disciplin for too long.

so nokia was made from metallic glass ...

Building a space shuttle from BMGs would be astronomical. I see what you did there...

We just need to get the plastic and steel to become friends or fall in love and then fuse

Omg the scientist who keeps on fainting whenever he sees metallic glass is my favorite

2:52 _degrees_ Kelvin It's been almost 50 years since the 13th CGPM, do try and keep up, Ash.

2:17 - 2:25 "It's a liquid." "No, it's a solid, it's a solid!" "It's a lolsquid..."

A good name for a band?

Ahhhh...I see. I've only heard of this research area briefly when I was an undergrad. Now I kind of know the significance of the complex chemical formulas on metals (in the majority of materials science papers) I've been seeing in the library.

Poor metal and plastic; no one like them anymore :(

I like how some scientists fall to the ground from love when looking at metallic glass

so it has the property of metal and plastic, and we're calling it glass? I suppose it is partially crystalline, but....

i just keep hearing "Transparent Aluminium" even though thats not quite the same thing.

Any kind of material has its own weaknesses, there are restrictions in their applications due to their properties but without doubts the metallic glass is going to fill the voids of those weaknesses and will be a very useful material in the industries around the world.

As a metallurgical engineering student, this is very cool. Abraços do Brasil.

video came out 1 minute ago and the video is 4:33 minutes long. How are people saying good video even though they didn't watch the whole video?

Ted Ed gives me answers to questions I didn't even know I had

Love these vids from the animations, the calm informative voice guy, the information i probably never considered or asked for but totally appreciate 😀 todo eso

Star Trek's transparent aluminum eh?

I'm both steel and plastic and i find this offensive.

Metallic Glass seems like a jerk.

It is fascinating how this material is much stronger and lighter than conventional metals, can be molded like plastic, and not corrode or rust. Because of its properties, metallic glasses will be good rivals to plastics, metals and ceramics in the next years.

Grain boundaries aren't weak spots, usually the smaller the cristal size, the more grain boundaries you have, and stronger is the metal. And the metallic glass you are talking about is basically just a huge chunk of amorphous grain boundaries. They are however more susceptible to corrosion, just like the metallic glass, since the atoms there have less neighbors and are in a more unstable chemical arrangement

Steel is adorable!!! *hugs!* >v

Basically it is an amorphous solid metal.

Spectacular video! It's one of the most amazing videos from the channel!!

whoever you are, you are my favorite host in this channel, your voice is so clear and nice to hear, so pleasing in the ears

Whose voice is this?It IS JUST AWESOME.

A ted-ed video teaches me more in like a few minutes that school does in years

There is no doubt that this new material will make a huge difference in how we develop new technology, this might be the solution to a huge variety of problems around the world and it could potentially be a great replacement for plastic

makes me more excited to get into metallurgy!

That scientist who would faint from love for the metallic glass is so cute!!

I saw nickel in the compound when you showed us what makes it up, now with my understanding of magnetic metals as I know that steel kept its magnetic properties from iron and as nickel is a magnetic material does the metallic glass also keep the magnetic properties or does it lose them?

3:48 that reminds me of super cooled pure water. While it's pure theres nothing for the water to nuclear around hut whenever you pour it on let's say a table, the particles or microbes present will become the impurities in the water and cause it to become ice or in this case crystallize . Pretty cool how different things work on the same principles

Ted really making videos for questions we have in the shower

Can they be melt by jet fuel

I was hoping this would be about something like transparent aluminum, like on Star Trek.

I think that this is what Lake, the main character from Infinity Train season 2 is made out of, which means that in season 1, she crushes a pair of metallic glass glasses, discards a metallic glass backpack full of metalic glass stuff and a metalic glass jacket and the rest of her metallic glass clothing items in season 2; she could've flexed on any scientist/rich person who's interested in the subject with just one of her metallic glass boots right after leaving the train. (Though Lake might still not want to do that and continue keep to herself/close friends, cause she's made of the stuff) You know, people from future seasons of Infinity Train (if there ever will be anymore after season 4, it's on hiatus for now) can still pick up this stuff, though I'm not sure if it'll fit them; I wonder how they'd feel about the sad pair of crushed metallic glass glasses, would they even recognize them as glasses? Probably, but that's still a very sad thing that happens to a pair of METALLIC GLASS GLASSES.

I would like to request Ted Ed to increase the volume of the narrations in the future videos.

thank you so much team ted ed.

Is this whats on the back of Sony Xperia Z5?

I think metallic glass will have a significant impact on industries around the world, due to the fact that it mixes the properties of both metal and plastic (each very important on their own right) and it manages to avoid some restrictions that those materials individually have. It will likely replace metal and plastic eventually, however, the cost of its production and time of development should be taken into account.

Thanks for the great work it helped me a lot.

Reminds me of Transparent Aluminum.

Estaba buscando una explicacion simple de los "metalic glasses" , gracias por tu video, excelente!

Hey what about the hemp? I read somewhere that a guy made a car from hemp and it was strong as steel yet easy to shape like plastic.

4:16 - The sky's the limit, unless they're used in space travel equipment.

OMG I really love his voice

Please, let them be more ecologicaly sustainable than plastic

Just like in the Spiderman game. Super strong, but weak when exposed to heat.

I love this channel! Here I can practice my listening (I'm from Brasil). Clear sound 👍👍

i need a kitchen knife made out of this stuff! ASAP!

Science steel hasn’t found what it’s looking for.

Any shape you can form with plastic you can form with steel to an even higher degree of precision. Steel is very shapeable. It just requires more heat to shape. The best features of plastic is cheapness, light weight, resistance to corrosion, transparency, and flexibility.

I love this channel

metallic glass and plasteel, please

Steel + plastic = metallic glass. WHAT???

this is literally the greatest invention of the 150th century

Metallic glass will be essential in the future due to its properties. With current technology we shouldn't have to wait long to see it.

3:33 I need someone to love me as much as that scientist love BMGs

Never heard of this until today

I think it is most often pronounced "micro-meters". "Mi-crometre" sounds more like Thermometer, even though I know that it follows the same pronunciation as kilometre, I'd go more with that from centimetre. :) Otherwise, it sounds like a measurement device: "mi·crom·e·ter ˌmīˈkrämədər/ noun a gauge that measures small distances or thicknesses between its two faces, one of which can be moved away from or toward the other by turning a screw with a fine thread."

People in the comment section are steeling each others joke

How is metallic glass different from alloy

Remember when Scotty manufactured "transparent aluminum" in one of the Star Trek movies?

i need it right now NOW

I bought a Wooden whistle, But it Wooden whistle, I bought a Steel whistle, But it Steel Wooden whistle, I bought a Led whistle, But it Steel Wooden Led me whistle! (Not original)

I love how we humans develop things to make life easier even while living in a system that pursues only what is profitable for the chosen few. It makes one thing that an end to this irrational system is still possible.

If you want to go into this field, it's called Material Science. From what I understand it's a field with a huge demand, without many people to supply.

Metallic glass is the celebrity of all metals and plastic.

I love the animation.

Load-bearing applications can always combine strong glasses and ductile crystals.

Its like PET plastic, if cooled to slowly it becomes grey and more shatterable then the weakest glass. If cooled really quickly it becomes a crystal clear soft and strong plastic that we know today as a water bottle

How the molecular structure is arranged really matters…

This video is really neat, I like you ted ed

great lesson

He loooks *sharp* ...

that's a heck of a powerful magnifying glass!

These sound like the next composite plastics/materials.. Tomorrrows "hard to recycle" material

This would be a perfect application for solid state batteries and piezoelectric technologies. You could arrange carbon structures the way you want them. Anodes, Cathodes?

The iPhone 2X (20) is made out of BMG (Bulk Metallic Glass) and is 30,000,000,000 dollars!

Amorphous solids are never meant to be strong. Lacking a crystal structure makes materials weak. This is a intuitive thought. You cannot build a bridge randomly placing steel bars. You have to put them in specific order so that they bear the load evenly. Thats what crystals do in a material. Your initiation of shining light to the path of a future scientist is appreciable. We should focus on thinking of making a strong and cheap material that can take any shape. Steel can take any shape like cast iron. But it is not that strong. And forging takes a lot of work. And its not as flexible. May be we should come up with a better forging technique. That will bring the most out of the available materials.

Hmmm.... I'm thinking that metallic glass might be the material we use to construct deep space ships. What I think will happen soon is some corporations along with government, or even international backing, will begin setting up space infrastructure like asteroid mines and orbital fabrication facilities. In its final form, this will be fully autonomous, with robots mining asteroids, bringing the raw materials to orbital or deep space refineries, then bringing the refined materials to fabrication facilities in orbit or deep space. There will probably be an orbital drydock that takes the refined materials and constricting a ship. There is a lot that can be built using just materials mined out of a few asteroids. So much so that there will likely be an excess of raw materials at the beginning of the 23rd century. And fabrication facilities in orbit or deep space could be used to manufacture all of our products and just ship them down to Earth. It's a lot easier to get things down here from space after all. Also having all of our industrial capabilities off-world will help slow down climate change.

Steel & plastic: who are you Metallic glass: I’m you but better

GREAT video! Thank you.

Scotty invented this in Star Trek IV. Transparent Aluminum.... once again, Star Trek called it!

0:41 That scientist at the right is simping MG.

The scientist falling in love kills me every time 😮‍💨😂😂

Hope the scientist are able to succeed in their quest for making it affordable for common purposes.

Oh look! Someone has rediscovered Iron Age's quenching of steel !

So it's basically the same process that occurs when you take a piece of yellow hot steel and dunk it in water?

Metallic glass is so cool!

The weakness of this material is the fact that it has no grains... the narrator presented the grains as bad but in fact it makes the material more durable under stress and it gives a fracture "warning".

Awesome explanation..

Didn’t know it existed, cool.