Air Force Academy cadet creates bulletproof substance

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chicharrones said:
I'm having a hard time understanding the negativity towards this young air force cadet.

If my daughter had worked hard and spent her time learning, and successfully recreated someone else's work on her way to getting a scholarship at a respected University, I'd be very proud.

So what if a news organization did a TV story on it? Don't we wish our young people to work hard, learn hard, better themselves, and become a self supporting person in society? Shouldn't we see more of these stories versus the constant onslaught of crime and terrorist activity?

I say good for her.
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The negativity stems from the fact that she's getting credit for "inventing" a new type of body armor, when in fact all she did was perform for her professor a sixth grade science experiment. All she did was mix cornstarch with water to make ooblek. If a male cadet had come to that professor with the same thing he would have had it explained to him that he needs remedial instruction if he's just now finding out what a non newtonian fluid is.

Even the armor they tested, her professor was the one who mixed that up if you read the story closely. Literally all she did was mix cornstarch with water, then needed her professor's help simply to recreate something that had been developed decades earlier. Had she come up with the mixture on her own I would have given her course credit for an experiment, but it's certainly not news worthy. High school science fair entry at best, and probably not a winner at that. Recreating decades old technology with your professor's help is NOT inventing something. It's a learning exercise, nothing more.

I also find it somewhat unbelievable that she even came up with the idea on its own. If you've ever been on youtube you've watched videos of people playing with ooblek, and she probably made it somewhere along the way in school even.

I imagine our enemies are seeing this news piece and having a good laugh at our expense right now. Thanks a lot air force academy. I hope it was worth it, making our military look weak and stupid in front of our adversaries.:cuss:

jbm said:
You can patent a ham sandwich. It doesn't mean anything anymore. The patent office is so busy it's ridiculous.
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Amen. "Patent trolling" has become its own genre of legal hooliganism of late. Of course no one can ever forget Amazon being awarded a patent for taking a photo against a white background.:D
 
grampajack said:
All she did was mix cornstarch with water to make ooblek. If a male cadet had come to that professor with the same thing he would have had it explained to him that he needs remedial instruction if he's just now finding out what a non newtonian fluid is.

Even the armor they tested, her professor was the one who mixed that up if you read the story closely. Literally all she did was mix cornstarch with water, then needed her professor's help simply to recreate something that had been developed decades earlier.
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The cornstarch and water was just for the news crew and people not familiar with ooblek. Per the video (and the link below) the young lady and her teacher worked with other materials.
http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-cadet-bullet-stopping-goo-for-body-armor-2017-5
 
wally wrote:
...but if she has really found a new compound with the "right" properties it will be a real break-through!
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But if you listened to the Fox video, that's exactly what the claim is.
 
grampajack said:
They'll probably give her an honorary doctorate. In any case, it's always good to see the Army using taxpayer money to conduct sixth grade science experiments in the name of social justice.:scrutiny:
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grampajack said:
I imagine our enemies are seeing this news piece and having a good laugh at our expense right now. Thanks a lot air force academy. I hope it was worth it, making our military look weak and stupid in front of our adversaries.:cuss:
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This comes across as cynical curmudgeon speak, IMO.
 
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gampajack wrote:
I don't mean to be negative, but I think what we're seeing here is a plug for social justice.
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No, what you mean to be is sexist. And dismissive of institutional research.
 
grampajack wrote:
All she did was mix cornstarch with water to make ooblek.
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Sheesh!

Did you even listen to the Fox video?

The cornstarch & water was an illustration of the principle. The work done on the ballistic-resistant material involves other materials (described in the story as "ballistic materials").
 
Ok, I took it as she added something to the process to improve it......I can't imagine them reacting like this and writing the article if she just put some corn starch in water and said voila.
 
hdwhit said:
No, you can't.

Show me such a patent. Further, so me a utility patent (as opposed to a design patent) on a ham sandwich.
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Not a ham sandwich, but here is one for a grilled cheese sandwich.
https://www.google.com/patents/US20110159153

PB&J? Yep.
https://gastronomica.org/2002/02/04...jelly-sandwich-food-as-intellectual-property/

Though later repealed, but it was patented. https://www.law360.com/retail/artic...ects-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich-patents

There is a whole section of the patent office dedicated to edibles...
https://www.good.is/articles/can-you-patent-a-sandwich
 
chicharrones said:
The cornstarch and water was just for the news crew and people not familiar with ooblek. Per the video (and the link below) the young lady and her teacher worked with other materials.
http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-cadet-bullet-stopping-goo-for-body-armor-2017-5
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According to what I read, it was her professor who actually came up with whatever formula they showed being tested. As far as I can tell, all she did was mix cornstarch and water and suggest using a non newtonian fluid to make armor, things that have already been explored decades ago by others.

hdwhit said:
No, what you mean to be is sexist. And dismissive of institutional research.
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That's a pretty libelous accusation. But if giving credit only where credit is due, regardless of gender, then I suppose that makes me a sexist.

hdwhit said:
Sheesh!

Did you even listen to the Fox video?

The cornstarch & water was an illustration of the principle. The work done on the ballistic-resistant material involves other materials (described in the story as "ballistic materials").
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I certainly did. She mixed cornstarch with water to illustrate a well known property of non newtonian fluid to a guy with a masters in science, suggested an already well-known application of such for armor, then "they" added ballistic materials.

Nothing even remotely original or innovative happened.

Her professor did the actual work.

What more do you need to know?

.................................

This reminds me of those female soldiers who passed Ranger school with special treatment. This is nothing more than another plug for social justice at the taxpayer's expense, and at the expense of the reputation of our military. I imagine right now Putin is probably laid up in bed from the cracked rib he must have gotten from laughing too hard when he saw this crap on the news.

And meanwhile our real innovators in DARPA are wondering where their news piece is, now thoroughly demoralized.
 
grampajack said:
No, it's not. There are plenty of people in our DoD, both in and out of uniform, who have made real contributions to our national security. Where's their social justice?
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I figure they aren't students anymore and they know what recognition they receive is from their peers since they can't exactly talk to the press about their accomplishments.
 
So, one of the main problems with most body armor is that it does not breathe well. Which is complicated when it is worn close or tight to the body(the sensation of pulling armor out of the freezer and waiting for it to thaw back to fit is near beyond words).
Non-Newtonian fuilds are not known for their vapor permiability

I'll suspect the "ah ha!" moment involves how this could be adapted for aircrew, who work in an environment significantly different than upon the ground.
 
chicharrones said:
I figure they aren't students anymore and they know what recognition they receive is from their peers since they can't exactly talk to the press about their accomplishments.
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Sure they can. Of course they couldn't give away classified details, but DARPA talks to media all the time. They even have a podcast for crying out loud.

The point is that there are people who are making real contributions to our military, and they pretty much always go without any praise from the general public, or from anyone for that matter. They're just a name on some declassified document somewhere. And instead of recognizing someone deserving, our overly politicized military chose to promote the highly exaggerated accomplishments of someone who really didn't do much of anything.

This was never about recognizing anyone's accomplishments. It's all about promoting a political agenda. Just like the female Rangers they pushed through the program just to make a point.
 
> drag racers had been using them for at least 10 years

Or when Renault invented the pneumatic valve spring... ASL motorcycles had them in the 19-teens. Or when Honda invented the retractable hardtop. Which the Ford Skyliner had in the 1950s. Or when...

"What goes around, comes around..."
 
jbm said:
You can patent a ham sandwich. It doesn't mean anything anymore. The patent office is so busy it's ridiculous.
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No, you cannot.

Double Naught Spy said:
Not a ham sandwich, but here is one for a grilled cheese sandwich.
https://www.google.com/patents/US20110159153

PB&J? Yep.
https://gastronomica.org/2002/02/04...jelly-sandwich-food-as-intellectual-property/

Though later repealed, but it was patented. https://www.law360.com/retail/artic...ects-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich-patents

There is a whole section of the patent office dedicated to edibles...
https://www.good.is/articles/can-you-patent-a-sandwich
Click to expand...
The patents for those are the process patents, ie, ways to keeping the the food item from spoiling, or some other such process not used before.

Coming up with a new way to refine oil is not the same as re-inventing oil....

As to the pb&j patent, since it was tossed out, it shows you cannot patent an existing sandwich.
 
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RecoilRob said:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/liquid-body-armor.htm

So they researched the subject...and found NOTHING like this had been done before? Please.....this article is from 2007...and where is all the liquid armor? Obviously...there are issues that haven't been resolved with it....and it's highly unlikely that our Heroine has discovered something unknown to others who have gone before.
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Where have I heard this before? It sounds so familiar.
 
lysanderxiii said:
No, you cannot.


The patents for those are the process patents, ie, ways to keeping the the food item from spoiling, or some other such process not used before.

Coming up with a new way to refine oil is not the same as re-inventing oil....

As to the pb&j patent, since it was tossed out, it shows you cannot patent an existing sandwich.
Click to expand...


You will probably consider the crustless sandwich a process patent because the sandwich does something different, but it is the sandwich that is patented.
https://www.google.com/patents/US6004596

And it can be patented for much the same reason as the cadet's ballistic non-newtonian fluid. It does things a little differently.
 
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