The "Oh My, Look Who Has Pie" Thread

[Hymay]

what is that image in your avatar? it has always been curious to me.

it looks like some kind of a flower on a glass platter being heated, from below, by a blowtorch...

but I'm not sure. so, do tell.

Actually that is pretty close, its a flower on top of a small slab of Aerogel, (also called things like "solid air, solid smoke, frozen smoke" etc) Its an ultralight super insulator that always fascinated me. It's also the material with the lowest known density of any solid. It weighs only 3x an equivalent volume of air (I assume @ sea level density or something similar.. not sure exactly though) Think I read somewhere it holds 15 or so guiness records, and pretty much negates most energy transfers- heat, electric, acoustic.

Neat stuff!

The flower survives pretty well with a flame underneath it... Only problem is it can be rather brittle, so it doesn't survive too well in alot of areas where superlight insulation would be really, really useful (ie, air/space craft)

Got the image from an article waaaay back when, but I found it pops up easily if ya google aerogel.