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World’s Lightest Solid!
Aerogels are the world’s lightest (least dense) solids. They are also excellent thermal insulators and have been used in numerous Mars missions and the Stardust comet particle-return mission. The focus of this video is silica aerogels, though graphene aerogels are now technically the lightest.
At one point Dr. Steven Jones literally held the Guinness World Record for making the lightest aerogel and therefore lightest solid. If you’re interested in learning more about aerogels, let me know in the comments as there is a potential trilogy in the works…
Huge thanks to Dr. Stephen Steiner and the crew at Aerogel Technologies. To find out more or buy your own aerogel sample, check out:
Thanks to Dr. Steven Jones and Dr. Mihail Petkov at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
And thanks to FLIR for loaning us the awesome high definition thermal camera. The footage is amazing!
Special thanks to Patreon supporters:
Donal Botkin, Michael Krugman, Ron Neal, Stan Presolski, Terrance Shepherd, Penward Rhyme and everyone who provided feedback on an early draft of this video.
Filming by Raquel Nuno
Animations by Maria Raykova
Drawings by Mariel Solsberg
Music From “Seaweed” “Swagger Stagger”
