Eggs were often beaten in copper bowls. Why copper bowls? Chefs might have been able to give you some kind of reason, but it would have sounded silly to scientific ears. But the modernists discovered that the ions in the copper ended up forming complex bonds with the conalbumin in the eggs.
- Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit
The reason why copper bonding with conalbumin is desirable is that the conalbumin-copper complex is more stable than the conalbumin alone, so egg whites whipped in a copper bowl are less likely to denature (unfold).
Black Opal from Lightning Ridge, Australia
huh? Transparent?
Pretty neat nonetheless, I have some ideas that will make good use of this on floors. Translucent floors are a whole lot more interesting that translucent walls.
late-nightsnack:
Luccon by Juergen Frei is a concrete wall composed of 96% concrete. The other 4% is fiber optics layered together which allows light to pass through= Transparent concrete! Sweet!
Since I’m on the topic of interesting materials, just came to know that Diamond has not been the hardest material for at least half a decade now. First came Aggregated Diamond Nanorods (ADNR), and those were surpassed by w-BN (Wurtzite Boron Nitride) which itself has been surpassed by the current champ - a pure lab generated sample of Lonsdaleite with a value of 15.8 on the Mohs scale of hardness (Diamond is at 10).
