Talk:Aerogel

The feel of the touch

Does it fell like extruded or expanded polystyrene. In the introduction it says it feels like Styrofoam or expanded polystyrene. Styrofoam is extruded polystyrene foam and not expanded as it sas in the intro.

213.115.120.242 (talk) 08:32, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

How about sound absorption/isolation?

I haven't found any info about sound absorption and sound isolation ability. This is very interesting for musicians, when it comes to isolation and soundproofing in the music studio. Normally, you need heavy isolation materials to isolate sound to/from a room. Would this be true with this material too - or does it work well in that respect in spite of the weight? In order to effectively soundproof bass frequencies, you need 1/4 wavelength of material thickness when it comes to porous absorbers (or you need to make tuned basstraps), is this something that might change with this material? Can someone please find any info about theese questions?

Aerogels are being investigated not so much for sound absorption/isolation, but for matching the specific acoustic impedance between a piezoelectric transducer and air. A piezoelectric transducer has a specific acoustic impedance on the order of 10,000 greater than that of the surrounding air. This limits the sound transmitted into the air: much of it is reflected back into the piezoelectric material itself. An aerogel layer between the transducer and air can greatly increase the intensity of transmitted sound. Aerogels have been measured to absorb sound, but only at high frequencies, e.g., 70 kHz to 2 MHz. See: Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 145, 227, 1992, and Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 186, 244, 1995. Psalm 119:105 (talk) 15:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

World's least dense solid?

Aerogel is a two-phase gel, nearly all of the volume of which is in the gas phase. Is that in fact a 'solid', as such? Grassynoel (talk) 08:27, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a porous solid - but is the girder-based material of the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge also a porous solid, possibly with lower density? This article [1] claims a new material is lighter than aerogel - but it's only on the micro scale. It's basically little tubular girders, and the holes are large enough to see.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:16, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Carbon aerogel is a good radiative insulator?

“Carbon aerogel is a good radiative insulator because carbon absorbs the infrared radiation that transfers heat at standard temperatures.” This statement makes no sense. Electromagnetic absorption and radiation are symmetrical. Carbon is equally good at thermal absorption and radiation. This principle is commonly known as “Good absorbers are good emitters.” AndreasWittenstein (talk) 06:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I think this can make sense in a way. We read that the regular aerogels are good insulators against conduction (hardly anything there to conduct) and convection (gas cannot circulate) but pass radiant energy because they are pretty transparent (except to blue light, which they scatter). So now the carbon aerogel that will appear black and absorbs light including IR will convert the radiant energy to local heat on the surface but the two other insulating properties will prevent the local heating from propagating through the aerogel in a speedy manner. I expect that hitting it with a laser will cause it to overheat but using it to shield a sensor could be just the thing. - Idyllic press (talk) 21:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

No longer has lowest density

Needs updating for this : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/18/worlds_lightest_material/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.193.182 (talk) 22:12, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I did a minor update with a citation for aerographite, which is the lightest material as of July 2012. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.16.96 (talk) 20:51, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

See also section

We could add Kapton, if anyone agree please ad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FxJ (talk • contribs) 15:35, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Silicosis?

Is there any documented info in a connection between silica aerogel and silicosis? I rephrased the paragraph on silica aerogel safety to incorporate it, based on a drive-by IP edit. It seemed reasonable to me, but I don't know enough to say if this is accurate, or "obvious" or wp:synth. Grayfell (talk) 01:14, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Radiative insulators

The Properties section says: "Aerogels are poor radiative insulators because infrared radiation (which transfers heat) passes right through silica aerogel." In the Silica section: "Silica aerogel strongly absorbs infrared radiation." Which is correct? --User:Gideonr0 13:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Neither statement is correct because of uncertain properties of silica aerogels - for example, they easily trap water, which increases their infrared absorption. The former statement is more realistic as discussed here. I have corrected the article. Materialscientist (talk) 07:40, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Vacuum balloon

I vaguely recall reading a book decades ago describing a tribe of people who had vacuum filled airships (Tom Swift series possibly). I think (or dreamed) I read somewhere that a helium filled aerogel was made to float. What if one were to take a big (read expensive) block of aerogel and vacuum bag it. Could it just possibly work like a mythical vacuum balloon without having a impossibly light and strong pressure vessel by supporting a thin pressure envelope from the inside? Has this experiment been tried? I see it is a recurring theme Vacuum airship - Idyllic press (talk) 21:59, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Found this document perhaps it is time for vacuum balloons Microfabricating the First Ever Lighter Than Air Solid Structure - Idyllic press (talk) 22:09, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Aerogel/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Most of the useful information is already in the article. I suggest formatting the chemical properties into a box, referencing production and uses where gaps remain, and adding current events about technological interest as necessary. Teply 01:53, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 01:53, 28 August 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 06:47, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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Units of Measurement and utter incompetence!

I'm surprised it was unnoticed: "The density of air is 1,200 g/m3 ..." the value is obviously bad, so i looked up the citation to see whether the citation itself had an error. Nope, it's either the uploader couldn't read the table (which clearly gave all densities in g/cm3, not g/m3), or someone trolled the wikepedia by change all the units.

The density of Aerogel itself that was stated to be as low as "1.000 g/m3" should put up a bs alarm right away - i checked the cited source once again - it stated none of the things said in the article. It did mention that they measured dielectric constant, which was 1.008 , but it was not a density. It is funny though... the numbers still don't match - i guess it was too hard to copy that down.

This article needs to be fixed and checked for errors by someone who actually understands, what they're reading and writing about. Ok, the thing is that the history of changes made by the person, who screwed this stuff up, should be checked for more errors in other articles in order to ensure that there is no more false information.

These aren't all of errors that i noticed this article - i didn't read the whole article, i just skimmed by. I left the mistakes be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nordzikas (talk • contribs) 21:01, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Hygroscopic vs. Hydrophilic

Aerogels are called both hygroscopic and hydrophilic in the article. Can't be both. --84.189.83.112 (talk) 12:34, 25 November 2020 (UTC)