This is cool.
Elrohir said:
That's pretty awesome. It would be a real help. It's disadvantages, though, are the same the Medieval knights had with chain mail: It would often stop a regular blow, but you still got hit by the kinetic force, leaving bruises, and often shattered bones.
Still, coat the uniforms with that, and it could seriously lower casualty rates.
Two words for you, man:
SILLY PUTTY.
If you hit a ball of silly putty with a hammer, it can shatter. That's how quickly it turns inflexible. Being part Kevlar should stop this armor shattering, but it'll still stiffen.
Once this principle is applied even further (because that's what this armor is doing), you'll get full-body armor that stretches freely when you want to put it on or off, but when impacted, it should turn into a
completely inflexible shell and distribute the kinetic force over the entire body.
In short, medieval knights essentially had the tradeoff between plate (good distribution, poor movement, a poor fit) and mail (poor distribution, good for wearing). And even good plate would buckle under a strong impact.
When you look at this armor, it seems it'll just strengthen more in response to impact, which means the kinetic force will be far better distributed than what a mail shirt could do.
Cheezy said:
thats neat, but i wonder how long it takes for it to go back to being a liquid again once you get shot. also, how much does it restrict movement when it stiffens up? How much force is needed to make it stiffen? THere are just so many questions i have, and i really dont expect answers to them.
I can answer those, having studied similar materials in my spare time:
It takes almost no time at all.
It restricts movement a lot when stiffened up.
It stiffens proportionally to the force applied.
Punches have too little force and are too distributed!
