As an engineer I’ve known of nitinol for a while, did some labs with it in college. But I never saw the example of bending the nitinol pipe in half and have it return to shape. Awesome material
hell yeah we use it dentistry and are also taught all about it ,especially for root canal instruments and for braces and orthodontic appliances.. but just like you never knew it was used in so many different ways ,crazy that all these fields have this material in common
@@slav_K0 if you are holding the tube like in the video, the heat will linger for a while (really it's your hand holding on to it). Otherwise it would dissipate into the air if it were held in place. However, for a tire rotating at high speeds, there is not really any time for the heat to escape, which is perfect because we get to "recycle" that heat energy instead of turning it into waste heat.
Veritasium videos are the type that don't need any fancy high pace over energetic editing needed. I will watch the video all through out no matter what
They use this metal in orthodontia too. The wires for braces are made out of this. They are “programmed” as the parabolic shape that the orthodontist wants, then bent and tied into the braces. The heat of the mouth (aka your body heat) makes the wire “want” to return to its original shape, thereby pulling your teeth into the proper position! I was amazed when my orthodontist showed me this, it was super cool to see as a kid.
Wait... so why when I had braces as a kid did they need to constantly be tightened and adjusted? Or is it a newer thing in orthodontics? Edit: Also my teeth wanted to return to their original position as well... 5 years of braces and retainers did nothing!
@@koffing2073 Imagine thinking everyone knows about all technology and when it was created and used. He asked a question because it wasn't obvious to him.
I discovered a congenital defect in my heart at age 34. It was a penny sized hole in the two top chambers called the atria. They used a nitinol device to close the hole and allow heart lining cells to grow into it. This stuff saved me!
@@johanmetreus1268 yes that’s really unfortunate and I hope your sister is doing better now. I too had a minor “mini stroke” called a TIA when I was about that age but didn’t report it as it only lasted a few minutes. More people should be aware of this condition and screening when you’re young is extremely simple.
I had NiTiNOL wires in my orthodontics as a teenager. They worked to slowly, continually push the teeth into their new positions, rather than needing painful tightening every couple of weeks. Quite an impressive material!
@@RC_Engineering they literally mentioned multiple sectors that are implementing this material for upgrading current systems... did you not watch this video?
@@rl6382 oh I see. Youre mistaking the possibility of niche uses for actual widespread use. They've been theorizing uses for 40 years, yet when you look around do you see this material on a daily basis?
These types of videos is what keeps me going through mechanical engineering school. Seeing things I learned about being applied in real world situations, but also reedeming the knowledge I gained and thought was useless during materials courses.
Shoutout to all the amazing folks at NASA GRC's SLOPE Lab in Cleveland! I had the privilege of interning on this project and can't speak highly enough of everyone and all their work.
How do I become a scientist? I have lots of knowledge about things and have my own theories, being apart of this world crafting and creating for man kind would be bad ass
I think this is just awesome… these advances don’t just happen, even with huge effort. Going to Mars or the Moon is an All-NASA program, maybe an all-of-humanity program. GRC, U.Ohio so proud to share the logo.
@@Skept_ There are so many ways to get involved! It really depends on where you're at in life. Try to get engaged with local groups and communities--it's so much more rewarding to participate in person.
one of my customers was one of the engineers that was hired to study Nitinol in the late 60’s and 70’s he’s still inventing today and is currently close to a breakthrough in magnetics
What i really like about this videos, is the fact that the people that work in these places are actually nice and kind and are willing to share the beauty of science to whoever is in front of them. That's passion right here guys
@@xGaLoSx Well.. to show the difference. It is still called a tire after all. And seeing it getting shot by a bullet, not only not getting punctured but also not getting bent to unusable state, as a wheel, is kinda amazing.
I agree with you. I hate US but I love NASA. They help space exploration become reality. I dont care if Apollo really land on moon or not. That thing do no harm even if it a lie.
@@carlosquinto1383 Not weird at all. That is how national investments work. Just like with public education. The Post WW2 tech boom was fueled by major investments in public science education. Some people think that because a percentage of students flunk out, that the investment is not good, when in fact, the benefits far outweighs the loss. The smarter the country, the richer it will be.
In the first 10 minutes, they basically covered several key topics of a Materials Science degree in a very interesting and memorable way. I really wished this video was available a few years ago when I was still in uni...
Nasa and Boeing studied also chevrons with shape memory alloys, bending towards the flow of the jet exhaust when taking off or landing to reduce noise( by introducing mixing vortices) and straighting the chevrons out of the flow when cruising to increase performance
@Pronto Was thinking that too. Maybe some extreme temperature countries would cause issues here. I mean the air higher up is cold but it might not be colder than some of the coldest places on earth? Or similar with warmer air at ground level.
@@Vadow789 My orthodontist used NiTi in my braces about 30 years ago. I'll never forget him applying cool and watching the wire go limp then applying heat and instantly regaining the shape for my teeth.
As someone deeply passionate about material science, I found this video on NASA’s development of the Spring Tire to be incredibly fascinating. It’s amazing to see how research conducted by NASA eventually trickles back into commercial usage and benefits us all. Thank you for sharing this information with us!
Makes you realize that the government is actually more innovative than a lot of private companies. They come in after the government has spent a lot of time on research and development
21:34 shots like this really communicate science fantastically. "put your full body weight on it" you can see Derek physically interacting with the thing and playing with it like any student might
I am preparing for a solids class test, and I will be asked about everything discussed here. This video not only improved my understanding of the topic but it went beyond discussing this new material for me, the applications, different scenarios and even the history. In short, you have made a goldmine of a video. Thank You so much, Veretasium Team. I really love your channel, and you never cease to amaze me.
Hands down one of the best videos you've made and one of the best on TH-cam. So helpful. We watched this video as a family this morning with teenagers and 8 year old. They thought this was amazing. Great job inspiring science in the lives of my children.
I'm a materials science masters student and Derek presented the topic really nicely. It's close to the level I was introduced to in my bachelors. I was blown away then and guess the audience is too. Thank you!
As an engineer grad who had to work with material science this video was very facinating, and really gets you trying to think about other applications for such a material. I bet racecar companies are looking into this material for their tires. I wonder if you could use this material with appropriate heat controls to increase traction or decrease traction of the tire during the race. If so, I could easily see it being one of the biggest improvements to long-term race times as you could "deflate" the tire on harsh turns, and to slow down leading into them, and then "inflate" the tire on straights for speed.
In the context of racing tire pressure is usually used to control heat. Low pressure tires make more heat than the same tire at a higher pressure. They are just trying to target a specific temperature for a given tire compound. It could be cool to see it used to increase efficiency of vehicles with rubber tires. In the straights you could reduce the contact patch of the tire to reduce the coefficient of friction. In a corner it could do the inverse.
The stress-strain curve reminded me of my PhD work on single DNA molecules. We could grab the two ends of a single DNA molecule (with laser beams, of course), and make force-extension curves. DNA also goes through a phase transition under physical strain. At first it acts like a low stretch string, where the force increases quickly as the extension gets close to the full length of the molecule. At around 65 piconewtons (65x10^-12 N) it will “overstretch” and at a relatively constant force (hallmark of a phase transition) will stretch to ~1.7 times its normal length. When the force is reduced it will go back to its original length, although there can be significant hysteresis depending on how quickly the load is reduced. The overstretching is coupled to an unwinding of the double helix, so in effect it’s a wind up toy and can be used to apply torque, e.g. rotate a microscopic bead. DNA is a super cool material, I hope Veritasium does a video on this stuff.
I did not expect someone talking about overstretching DNA in an optical tweezer in a video about Nitinol. Greetings from a postdoc doing a lot of force extensions on RNA in magnetic and optical tweezers 😅
@@salina3192 As a layman, this video was mind-blowing enough, and now you two come in and tell us you can hold DNA with LASERS?! There's no brain left to blow anymore, it's all over the walls now!
> DNA is a super cool material Is there any form of research going on to use DNA as a main ingredient of a material? The same way e.g. polymers are used in plastic? Or what sort of (potential) applications do these cool properties you just mentioned have? Sounds fascinating!!
I vividly remember in my gen chem lab class at uni we had an experiment where we messed around with Nitinol and I was completely in shock and awe with how it was behaving. I want to say that day was the moment I fell in love with material science and now love learning and researching about polymers as a chemist!
So glad to hear Austenite and Martensite in one of your videos. I have built my career so far around these two words and it has been so rewarding. You guys probably got to see it fly on recently ;)
While watching this video I thought, this sounds like martensite. Its one of the few things I remember from college while in an engineering class. It stuck with me after a decade because it was so interesting.
My father was on the design team for the Apollo rover (and LEM,etc.) and received an award for his team’s design of the rover tires. It’s so cool to see this generations upgrades to the concepts they used back then!
I’ve never clicked on a video so fast. My great uncle was one of the lead engineers on the old moon rover tires. I’m so glad that they included it into this video and even though my uncle just passed away I know he would be thrilled that we are taking the next generation of tire for space travel for a spin.
@@smolltaco5667 I'm only a STEM student and not a fully fledged engineer but I suspect that would make for a pretty short ride compared to nuclear/electric vehicles Still would be mucho cool
Very cool, I’m in medicine and we use Nitinol stents a lot- interesting to learn how they retain their shape and are able to apply the necessary radial forces to a stricture
I worked with nitinol about 25 years ago in the medical industry, when it was being heavily promoted for stents. It's a great material, lots of potential. Good stuff!
I screamed “NITINOL” the moment that the video started. I knew immediately what was happening. Fantastic video, as a Materials Engineering student, it’s neat to see the applications of material research, such as nitinol.
Did my masters thesis on modelling and simulation of shape memory alloy actuators and I’m happy you are showcasing this to a broad audience. Awesome stuff
My job is to develop heat treat processes for mainly medical device components made out of nitinol, getting the components to transition from martensitic to austenistic at specific temperatures in all sorts of shapes, but even I was able to learn more about nitinol and it’s varied uses. Really fascinating video.
I once designed a solenoid valve that used a nitinol spring. The problem I had was the fatigue life was not good. I would get springs breaking at 100k cycles and I needed 10x that. So I abandoned nitinol for spring applications. This was 15 years ago. Have there been advances that have improved the fatigue performance? I assume tires would need very good fatigue life.
@@alexkram it’s possible that the strain was too close to the maximum of roughly 8%, which over time could weaken the material to the point of breaking. 3-4% strain is ideal for longevity, and would make for a relatively life-long part.
@@alexkram I'm also an engineer at a nitinol device manufacturer. A big factor in fatigue life is alloy purity. Companies now offer alloys with extremely low inclusions (ELI from Confluent, Enduro from Memry, etc.) You would have better luck with those alloys when considering fatigue. They are fairly recent advances so weren't available 15 years ago.
This video just kept getting better and better. Amazing work Derek and team! Side note: Michelan debuted airless tyres about 20 years ago, so it's a shame we're still yet to see them on passenger vehicles.
It is because airless tires have some drawbacks such as increased weight, higher rolling resistance and higher cost, which have prevented them not yet from being widely used in passenger vehicles.
@@bjarne9321 Also without a very durable/fast way to change things like vortex generators you are limiting an aircraft's maneuverability substantially let it be agility or range. Seems like an excellent material for commercial airliners running certain routes and niche projects alike. Can't wait to see if something similar can be made with different materials and/or properties.
@@jonadabtheunsightly I'm not so sure about that. We're already to the point of using carbon fiber on certain parts of the engine block, namely the pistons and connecting rods. Material sciences, 3d printing, and strange new ways of looking at engineering have dramatically changed cars before, and once consider super-exotic, are now common everyday things. The tire pressure sensors in my Mazda 2 were once debuted in the Porsche 959, at one time the fastest car in the world, as such an example. it's less about cost, and more about practicality. Someone mentioned comfort. I'd rather have the occasional flat than have a ride like falling down the stairs.
This was super interesting. Would love to see a follow-up video going into some of its limitations and why we haven't seen it more in industrial use for something that was discovered in the 60s.
@@panner11 So were computers back then. But the costs came down massively as they improved and got better at making them. So if it really is still so expensive, the question is what's stopping them from improving and getting better at making them?
@@pkmnogosari6091 titanium is the fourth most abundant metallic element, and the ninth most abundant element overall. It’s not rare at all, so it shouldn’t be so expensive.
@@asherandai2633 Semiconductors became cheaper because transistors were made smaller and smaller. Meaning less material was needed. You can't apply that concept to something like gold, for example. It's expensive because it's limited. Both Nickel and Titanium ore is very limited. Nickel is can only be mined in a few placed on earth in significant amounts. Same with Titanium. Both metals have very high melting points (need a lot of energy to work them into shapes). Hence why nickel alloys are used in jet engines (because it can handle crap tons of heat). The bonds between Titanium and the stuff it forms a compound with in the ores require a crap ton of energy to break. Extracting Titanium from ore will always be energy intensive. There's no way around that. Titanium is very reactive so it needs special environments and tools to be worked. An inert atmosphere and tools that won't contaminate it. Working with both Titanium and Nickel are both very mature technologies. Both metals are used extensively in the aviation industry. There are 35 000 Commercial aircraft existing now, alone. Most of them making extensive use of both nickel and titanium. Everything to make it cheap in terms of energy has been done. Then the electronics industry also uses a lot of nickel, and increasingly so with lithium batteries. Only a few countries are blessed with Nickel and Titanium ore. E.g. Russia. Hence why nickel prices are skyrocketing. In other words, using nitinol for a lot more stuff will increase Titanium and Nickel prices. Making it more expensive, not cheaper.
I've been to NASA Glenn at their wheel development and testing center, it's really cool. I've seen those shape memory metal wheels, and the huge simulated Martian surface they have for testing. So cool.
It’s technology like this that can affect entire industries that I love. There is so much that starts from space or military research that eventually is able to be used in wider applications by the public. We spend a lot in the US but stuff like this makes it worth it imo
@@zriyazira *impracticality will never let these tires get to the public. These Tires may be well suited for a surface like mars, but imagine driving 100 km/h+ on asphalt. They'll deform way quicker, wont be able to handle a hard surface like roads, the heat generated by those speeds will be insane, and the average car weighing more than 1500 pounds more than a mars rover these tires just arent designed for regular consumers. And thats not even touching on the price point of these things.
One thing of many that I apreciate about this channel is that you have made effort to adapt yourself to the science language of units... The metric system. Most others want to change the world instead of adapting.
Oddly enough, as an engineer, for some reason my first thought when encountering memory shape alloys was "this could make some *really cool seasonal artwork!* "
This wouldn't really work, because it only goes back to it's form when getting warm. You would have to manually reset it when it gets colder outside, but it would be a cool concept.
In my opinion, the best Veritasium videos are the ones that showcase awesome lab research + practical applications. What those NASA guys are doing is just brilliant, really fantastic work. Congrats to all of them!
I'm a racer, trucks, motorcyles, sand dunes and I loved this video! The spring interlay, layout reminds me of when I used snow chains in the sand dunes with a 1 wheel drive truck and tiny street tires, it worked.
The google will quickly censor this question: Why are TH-cam comments packed with circle-jerking sock puppets? Obvious, as are the countermeasures--but the google wants fake "engagement", the better to sell clueless ads.
The title was so catchy that I thought It was some clickbait, but knowing veritasium I knew it was unlikely. I'm not disappointed. Nasa really did reinvent the wheel!
It was mentioned that NiTiNOL is being used in multiple applications, which is super neat as I was able to use it for radio astronomy applications in my graduation thesis. Making large structures with NiTiNOL is way cheaper than launching and constructing them in space. The opportunities are almost endless!
I really wonder what's the downside of this material? Is it just cost? Cause all I've heard of it is super positive, if it is as good as it sounds we could have great developments in the near future
@@gabiferreira6864 As far as my project went, you'll order based on your specifics. I needed 1mm radius wires which had memorized as a straight line. I cut it in the size of my antenna and because of the memorized shape, I could completely bend everything to fit in the container. However, if you want to memorize custom shapes like the "Ve" or "NASA" we saw in this vid, I'd suppose you'd need to send the manufacturers specific details. My thesis was almost exactly 2 years ago, so maybe things have changed. It for sure wasn't like your typical DIY shops back then, but that made the experience feel more special
The people that work at this company are some of the luckiest people in our workforce.... you can just tell how excited they all are to show what they are developing which they all seem to love. Love what you do and never work a day in your life.
It's amazing seeing so many people comment here on Nitinol being used to save lives in medical field, to design strong structures. All because NASA had to solve a very unrelated problem for a program which many believe is a cash burn. Truly amazing stuff and shows why any expenditure on science is not enough
The excitement in his face while Santo is explaining about the Exothermic reaction, and he being genuinely happy that Derik guessed it right, that was truly happy to look at 😁
"elastocaloric" is the effect that happens with rubber bands too. Its exothermic when stretched and endothermic when realized. I wanted to make a cooling unit form it for so long, now I know its not just me.
One more interesting application is on seismic design of structures. During my undergrad I worked at the laboratory of the University of Ottawa with 2 PhD students that were investigating how to use Nitinol rebars and external reinforcement. Goal was to to allow for additional strain without failure of structures and to potentially recover the deformation under severe seismic events =)
Derek, what I love about your channel is how you treat your viewers like intelligent, educated human beings. You don't dumb down your content to the level of a five year old and you keep the clickbait to the minimum. Whenever I think youtube turned into a dumpster, your videos remind me that not all hope is lost.
The last segment of shaping the nitinol to "Ve"was a great touch. Do that everytime with the things you make videos about. It adds a certain feel to the videos. Like with the cement video, you could have carved "Ve" into some permanent structure while the cement was setting.
Shoutout to Cameron Hughes for using nitinol in his fashion designs. He runs a current through the wire and the piece changes shape - length of skirt, structure of shoulders, etc. Very cool.
Wow, what a cool video and comprehensive demonstration and explanation of nitinol and its applications! Great job on this one, probably one of my favorite Veritasium videos. And thanks to everyone at Glenn and the contractors that work on this awesome tech and explained it so thoroughly!
It's so cool to see the comments and the implementation of Nitinol in widely various applications. I even used them as guide-wires for surgical instruments in spinal surgery. Crazy material.
This is amazing. Even as somebody who doesn't spend much time engaging in physics discourse, I can completely understand how revolutionary this invention is. This could genuinely change the way we do everything. From travel, to home heating, to industrial uses. Incredible.
I've been lowkey obsessed with nitinol ever since needing my first pair of glasses in the late 80s and constantly having to go back and get my glasses adjusted or repaired. Too often, having fallen asleep with them still sitting on face, I'd wake up and find my eyeglasses had undergone some Level 6 trauma during the night and had jumped off the bed to escape the night terror. At best, they would sit crookedly and at uncomfortable angles to my face. After a while, the eyeglass fames would be stretched, twisted,, plasticized so hard, I'd need new fames altogether. Learning they made eyeglass frames with memory wire was like the heavens broke open and angels started singing.
I'm sure a lot of people have known of this material for a good long while, but that NASA is going to use it for the tires of the rover is new information to me and is quite exciting. My first thought for durable tires that flex was giant springs with wavy plates attached to the ends that contact the ground and then wires to thread through holes connecting contiguous plates so the wouldn't get too out of sync as the tires rotate. I did an experiment and had tubes inside the springs to keep them from bottoming out and it worked fairly well, but they were beyond heavy. This looks like a better idea.
We do agree though that if this is going to be used in tyres on airplanes and cars, they will still need to rubberise this metal right ? I mean, i dont think this would stand up to the wear of an airplane landing or a car that brakes at full force. Also i would doubt the friction properties is the same as a rubber on tarmac tyre.
@@JohnDoe-bd5sz Why would we use it for car or airplane tires on Earth? That would be kind of wasteful, both monetarily and materially. The only reason it's even needed is for extraterrestrial exploration in adverse or non-existent atmospheres. Also, you can't rubberize metal.
@@anon_y_mousse they said they were looking into using it as car tyres and airplanes tyres as well. Tslked about it being flexible enough to omit suspension as the tyres Would act as those as well
@@JohnDoe-bd5sz I must've missed that in the video, but if so that's a really silly thing to do. Instead of paying $400 for a new set of tires we'd wind up paying $400,000. No, thank you, to that.
One thing which wasn't covered is friction - because if the friction this material provides is close to or surpasses that of rubber, then bar astronomical manufacturing costs even with industrialization, we should technically be able to use it on vehicles.
I think it only replaces air inside rubber tires, you still need rubber to make a practical real (Earth) world tire. Otherwise if you were to just use the mesh, small debris would make their way into the tires, and be impossible to get out. That's why they still had rubber in that bicycle demo.
Why not use in tires on earth? Because it would put companies out of business. Everything on earth they make to be replaced, over and over and over again. $$$$$$
@Harmish :) yes, they know they would work on earth but I seriously doubt they would mass manufacture them for the average man on the streets. Much like the free energy Tesla discovered or the cars people invented that ran on water, it would cause the shutdown of major corporations. There are so many great inventions not available to the average man. Many inventions that the govt will buy the patent just so it cannot be manufactured for use by civilians.
@@briteeyes2133 impracticality will never let these tires get to the public. These Tires may be well suited for a surface like mars, but imagine driving 100 km/h+ on asphalt. They'll deform way quicker, wont be able to handle a hard surface like roads, the heat generated by those speeds will be insane, and the average car weighing more than 1500 pounds more than a mars rover these tires just arent designed for regular consumers. And thats not even touching on the price point of these things.
@@briteeyes2133 it's hard to appreciate just how good pneumatic rubber tyres are. The rubber fulfills three roles at the same time (containing the air, deforming around unevennesses, and giving traction to the ground), whilst the air manages to support a big weight with very little obstruction to the deformations / rolling. Those nitinol tyres do a formidable job at replacing this functionality, but they can't do it all as well as pneumatics. Unless you need your tyres to work at insane temperatures or survive deliberate perforation (and can't use liquid sealant), there's just no point.
I'm not sure, but I believe you don't need to heat it with a torch. If you run current through the wire it will heat up and return to it's original shape. That means you can have a solid state motor, and if you use many strands in parallel you could make it quite powerful.
Yeah any source of heat will do. The problem with your idea of a motor though is whether the energy required to make it contract is the same as the energy required to stretch it, if so then it could limit its usefulness. Using it for some kind of artificial muscle might work well though.
Yea that was how they applied it to flaperon controls replacing hydraulics, mentioned in this video. Though I think it was a heating element instead. A current would probably be even more reliable
My college roommate’s father (last name was MacArthur) made some engineering / design contributions to the Apollo Lunar rover wheel. I don’t recall any of the details, but he had a picture of his father holding the metal mesh wheel. :)
I'd learned about Nitinol many years ago (High school, I think), then I forgot the name. But not the properties of the material! Now the two are reunited in my brain! Thank you Veritasium!
Ok, this is the first time I hear about Nitinol. I've not been this enthralled by the science behind a material before. It''s actually extremely interesting. I wanna know more! :D
Wow, that is absolutely fascinating!! I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother once questioned NASA and why anything they did was necessary in terms of practical application in our daily lives. I wish she was still around to see this. Edit: For the record, I've never questioned their technological advances! Lol thanks for the supportive comments, though! 😅
They've had a long history of RND with other industries think aviation, military, weather, medical, foreign affairs, geography, chemistry, biology, metal alloys etc etc. Their international space station is special as well because it can remove some of the contamination that earth has on certain experiments. We'll most probably never know the true scope of how much NASA has influenced everyday tech that we use every day.
I wish I had this guy's life, he does some fascinating things and explains them so simply. Edited: OK to respond to the super logical commenters, let's change life* to job.
This could be awesome to the automobile industry also. You can dampen an impact by a huge amount if you use this material in certain areas of the vehicle. Amazing material!
Yes your right 👍 also there are lots of extreme heats at speed of continuous long journeys as well as the reverse in colder conditions in various continents as well without including seasons seasonal change that would also flip vary condition. @@ferdinandgleinser2681
Im still blown away that man went to the moon and immediately felt the overwhelming desire to drive on it. That is just bananas. Driving a nasa built dune buggy in 1/6 of earths gravity. Part of me is surprised they didn't drag a plywood ramp out of the lander to make a sweet jump.
As an iron worker this is very interesting! I wonder if we'll ever use it for super specific applications! Some of the crazy modern designs that are super expensive to build could definitely benefit from this. If it has enough tensile strenth than theres many applications it vould be used for. Probably too expensive still for now though if nasa is still working out the kinks (pun intended)
Dude. This video couldn't have been better timed for me. I'm literally replacing the tires on my E-Bike right now, while watching this. My town doesn't clean it's streets well and there's broken glass everywhere. Most of my innertubes lately have been One-Ride-Wonders. I would LOVE to put those Bike Tires to the test in a real-world environment.
15:02 specifically the part about stretching the nitinol wire, This has to be one if the coolest things in science I've ever seen. so often we see concepts like this visualized in relativity abstract ways, that make it hard to connect whats scientifically happening to what we see/ experience in reality even just on the microscopic scale- never mind molecular. but this is one of the only times ive seen a process like this where you could LITERALLY HEAR the molecular structure changing as you stretch it. thats absolutely insane to me, in such a cool way.
I’m so thankful that you exist .. I’m always watching all of your videos without once taking my eyes of the screen .. love everything you do man!! Keep it going please !
The animations on this channel (ex. 9:06) are great. This particular episode only had a few seconds of it, but generally they remind my of the animations from 2014's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (hosted by NdGT). A real sign of the effort and quality put into these edu-docs. Excellent work!
Other comments mention NiTi alloys in dentistry - points worth considering. I had my first root canal when I was 19, as a result of an infection contracted on vacation which killed the tooth's root. That was in 1971. Modern dentistry in those days used a silver alloy to fill the canal. Later experience proved that, even enclosed within a tooth, the alloy would eventually rust and need refilling. I had excellent dentists, for which I am thankful. So look upon yet another of the hundreds (or thousands) of revolutions in materials sciences that have happened over the past 50 years, that can be directly traced to work done at NASA and for space projects. Detractors of NASA deserve hard rebuffs for blathering when they know so little, and bad-mouthing without understanding that imperfections are a reality of everything in life, institutions included. I credit NASA's meticulousness in work procedures as worthy examples to learn from everywhere in science, economics, and business. I don't advocate simply copying them. I do advocate adapting and reapplying. After all, the new tires are also an example of that, even within NASA.
As a mechanical engineer, I find this fascinating. The stress/strain curve is an important measure of a material's mechanical properties. Of course, the stress applied is tensile stress. Compressive stress and shear stress are also important.
How does the stress strain graph dip at the yeild strength? Is the tension lower because the atoms are moving or does the cross sectional area get larger?
@@ZZZ77- Cross sectional area usually doesn't get larger. It would get smaller. The degree to which this happens is called Poisson's ratio (think of pulling taffy). The dip is because it's taking less stress to cause strain.
Would love to see the analysis of nitinol under compression and shear stress. And an inclusion of the strain energy calculation. I do not know how strain energy transitions during failure nor during the phase change in nitinol, but it seems reasonable that the strain energy = heat energy during the phase transition. Would love to know the answer.
what is your opinion on this being used on everyday road cars? wouldnt the lateral forces be too much for this type of tire?. The vertical loads seems find to deal with but when it comes to cornering at high speeds, the 8% is surely not enough.
@@penart8079 In ordinary use, cars aren't subject to the same type of stress that NASA was concerned about, namely traveling over very bumpy terrain. Cornering stress is quite different. The video said that the material might be suitable for use in landing gear, which is subject to quite a bit of stress, which would imply that it could also be used for cars. Look at how much the bar is being bent at 17:16 without a problem. So the question would be how much material would be needed for the application, how much would it weigh, and how much would it cost.
23:07 small note: changing the pressure can actually be advantageous when changing from tar/concrete roads to gravel & sand bc you need more surface area to grab ground and not sink in. If we had a NiTiNol tires with different modi that would be revolutionary
When you started bending the tube to extreme levels and it was changing temperatures from it... Amazing. I would buy one of those tubes to play with for sure. Incredible that materials like this exist and we're just now finding what could be near limitless uses for it.
I was wondering why this all felt familiar. I'm an ME grad at the University of Akron and I've seen Smart Tire Co around, it didn't click in my head until I saw Dr. Heather Oravec at 20:35. It's really cool to see them out in the real world instead of in the college setting :)
This is good presentation, of the long-term colonization problems, to the Moon or Mars. I am one of the last-alive design engineers of the original Lunar Roving Vehicles. One of the main problems we had, other than impact deformation & breakage, was the "abrasive wear" due to the Lunar dust. In actual testing, ordinary steel wires, of various alloys, only lasted a few hundred cycles in simulated Lunar dust. Vacuumized dust has similar properties to diamond dust. As a result, it became necessary to "coat" the wires with a sacrificial coating (zinc for LRV), in order to prevent "sawing" of the wires during flexure. It was thought at that time, that the astronaut's suits could be punctured by any sticking out wires ends. This became relevant, when a fender was knocked off, and a repair became relevant. The entire wire-design of the original LRV wheels was based on the ability to withstand wire breakage, for the duration of the mission. Other coatings were tried, but were too time-lengthy to implement, at that time. We only had about 14+months to do this. This presentation is inadequate, in that it shows testing on Earth, in conditions which cannot exist on Moon or Mars surfaces. Modern materials mathematical modeling is showing that these wire-like Nitinol wheels will have only limited useability, unless more durability is built into them, using other means. On the Moon, in the dark, the crystallization temperatures of the materials will dictate their survivability. It is probable that only some kind of "composite" structural material will survive, for very long. NASA has videos of the various impact and deformation studies which we did, and there is material available about the dust abrasiveness at their sites, and from the still remaining Boeing engineers. Bruno.
alloys and material science in general is so freaking cool. If you track the progression of industrial technology throughout history, a lot of it had to do with working our way up the "material technology tree" per say, since even if we had an idea for something, we didn't necessarily have the material science tech to actually make it happen, and then at every new breakthrough you then unlock so many new possibilities.
There’s not a veritasium video that I won’t instantly watch. Your content is always fantastic in ways that this comment could never convey. Keep up all the hard work ❤️
Yes typically the videos are great. Except when the video is an ad disguised as educational content, like the waymo video. Or when he gets lazy and has nothing interesting to say, like that one where they dropped rocks in the sand from a helicopter.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
As an engineer I’ve known of nitinol for a while, did some labs with it in college. But I never saw the example of bending the nitinol pipe in half and have it return to shape. Awesome material
it's super cool to feel in person. that hot/cold effect is even more than you'd think (check out the facial reactions in the video)!
hell yeah we use it dentistry and are also taught all about it ,especially for root canal instruments and for braces and orthodontic appliances.. but just like you never knew it was used in so many different ways ,crazy that all these fields have this material in common
I first read about it in the late 70's
@@thesmarttirecompany For how long does the bent part stay warm?
@@slav_K0 if you are holding the tube like in the video, the heat will linger for a while (really it's your hand holding on to it). Otherwise it would dissipate into the air if it were held in place. However, for a tire rotating at high speeds, there is not really any time for the heat to escape, which is perfect because we get to "recycle" that heat energy instead of turning it into waste heat.
I love that these 2 engineers are so happy with their work, they look genuinely happy.
who wouldn't be knowing they are on the brink of revolutionizing basically every industry $
everyone is happy when they get to do what they love
I wonder why...
No, they’re not
We are all nerds here.
Veritasium videos are the type that don't need any fancy high pace over energetic editing needed. I will watch the video all through out no matter what
For real man !! I wait eagerly for a new video from veritasium, and untill a new video comes i visit the old videos, or watch old Vsauce videos,
they need comment bots though
I watch it all the way through, but I have to do it at 1.5 speed...
@@falconerd343 godamn you guys have some real attention span problems
Jhonny Harris: why attac me?
They use this metal in orthodontia too. The wires for braces are made out of this. They are “programmed” as the parabolic shape that the orthodontist wants, then bent and tied into the braces. The heat of the mouth (aka your body heat) makes the wire “want” to return to its original shape, thereby pulling your teeth into the proper position! I was amazed when my orthodontist showed me this, it was super cool to see as a kid.
Wait... so why when I had braces as a kid did they need to constantly be tightened and adjusted? Or is it a newer thing in orthodontics?
Edit: Also my teeth wanted to return to their original position as well... 5 years of braces and retainers did nothing!
@@asherandai2633 because its obviously a new tech
@@koffing2073 Imagine thinking everyone knows about all technology and when it was created and used. He asked a question because it wasn't obvious to him.
@@koffing2073you’re obviously a d-bag
@@koffing2073 obviously not obvious to everyone
I discovered a congenital defect in my heart at age 34. It was a penny sized hole in the two top chambers called the atria. They used a nitinol device to close the hole and allow heart lining cells to grow into it. This stuff saved me!
That is Fantastic! You are a living example of High Tech Heart!
Glad they caught it in time, required my sister a stroke at the age 27 to find out she suffered the exact same problem.
@@johanmetreus1268 yes that’s really unfortunate and I hope your sister is doing better now. I too had a minor “mini stroke” called a TIA when I was about that age but didn’t report it as it only lasted a few minutes. More people should be aware of this condition and screening when you’re young is extremely simple.
Are you on any blood thinners or just aspirin? Always wondered when it came to heart application and age.
@@calimalu79cali11 matter of fact I’m on no meds at all. Aspirin for the fist 6 months then nothing 👍
I had NiTiNOL wires in my orthodontics as a teenager. They worked to slowly, continually push the teeth into their new positions, rather than needing painful tightening every couple of weeks. Quite an impressive material!
That's cool! Do you remember if they cost more than regular wires?
What do you mean “to” slowly? Surely not too slowly as that would be a criticism of them. You meant they worked slowly.
@@teeanahera8949
They worked to slowly, continually push the teeth
=
They worked to push the teeth
@@teeanahera8949 they worked to slowly and continually push to teeth into their new positions
@@teeanahera8949 I worked to swiftly and definitively get you back in school, to improve your English comprehension.
I did a report on nitinol in 8th grade science...41 years ago...nice to see this video explain its properties even further. Cool!!
It's sad that it's never found widespread usefulness.
@@RC_Engineering it just did
@@rl6382 where?
@@RC_Engineering they literally mentioned multiple sectors that are implementing this material for upgrading current systems... did you not watch this video?
@@rl6382 oh I see. Youre mistaking the possibility of niche uses for actual widespread use.
They've been theorizing uses for 40 years, yet when you look around do you see this material on a daily basis?
These types of videos is what keeps me going through mechanical engineering school. Seeing things I learned about being applied in real world situations, but also reedeming the knowledge I gained and thought was useless during materials courses.
I love the excitement and positive energy from all those engineers! They’re really happy to show their work.
We genuinely love what we do and hope to have a major impact in the future!
Well, they were given license to break the core tenet of every unimaginative boss and risk-averse superior ever, I'd be pretty stoked too!
welp I'd be hyped too working with magic metal everyday, damn wizards right here
@@thesmarttirecompany someone just made a brand new account just to reply to the comment 💀💀💀
Shoutout to all the amazing folks at NASA GRC's SLOPE Lab in Cleveland! I had the privilege of interning on this project and can't speak highly enough of everyone and all their work.
How do I become a scientist? I have lots of knowledge about things and have my own theories, being apart of this world crafting and creating for man kind would be bad ass
How? Learn all you can, and stay curious.
I think this is just awesome… these advances don’t just happen, even with huge effort.
Going to Mars or the Moon is an All-NASA program, maybe an all-of-humanity program.
GRC, U.Ohio so proud to share the logo.
@@Skept_ There are so many ways to get involved! It really depends on where you're at in life. Try to get engaged with local groups and communities--it's so much more rewarding to participate in person.
one of my customers was one of the engineers that was hired to study Nitinol in the late 60’s and 70’s he’s still inventing today and is currently close to a breakthrough in magnetics
China has entered the chat...
What kind of breakthrough?
I would also like to know, I’m intrigued.
@@dagoberttrump9290he's probably been close to a breakthrough for 5 decades 😅
underrated hottake @@colbyr7811
I'm not an engineer or physicist, but this is one of the coolest materials I've ever seen.
Physical
Yeah, I'm not physical. I'm a ghost >:)
You haven't seen my wife yet... Just kidding, i am forever alone.
Especially when straightened!
I said there are electric rocks just like magnetic rocks and suddenly there were all these photos of that stuff
What i really like about this videos, is the fact that the people that work in these places are actually nice and kind and are willing to share the beauty of science to whoever is in front of them.
That's passion right here guys
The team at NASA Glenn is incredible (and we like our guys a lot too)!
those first 2 tests were cringe and unnecessary. The new tire isn't holding in air, so why do a nail test?
@@xGaLoSx Well.. to show the difference. It is still called a tire after all. And seeing it getting shot by a bullet, not only not getting punctured but also not getting bent to unusable state, as a wheel, is kinda amazing.
Ofc not, if it wasn't a popular channel like Veritasium, they won't even care
@johnlucas6683 you don't need a test to know a nail isn't going to pop a tire that can't be popped.
We need more stuff like this to help the public understand that NASA is not an expense, but a great investment that pays back more than double.
How much as NASA put in your pocket? Nothing! Your brainwashed, I feel sort for you.
I agree with you. I hate US but I love NASA. They help space exploration become reality. I dont care if Apollo really land on moon or not. That thing do no harm even if it a lie.
No Bc bad for capitalism
@@ThatGamerAlexIsThatBoy Exactly. Capitalism values short term gains way more than long-term returns.
@@carlosquinto1383 Not weird at all. That is how national investments work. Just like with public education. The Post WW2 tech boom was fueled by major investments in public science education. Some people think that because a percentage of students flunk out, that the investment is not good, when in fact, the benefits far outweighs the loss. The smarter the country, the richer it will be.
In the first 10 minutes, they basically covered several key topics of a Materials Science degree in a very interesting and memorable way. I really wished this video was available a few years ago when I was still in uni...
they were this channel is old and you had stuff like nile red too and a bunch of other channels
@@b0bby5104he said he really wished this video not videos by this channel or just other quality science videos he specifically said THIS VIDEO
The plane with the vortex generators was the coolest part to me. Seeing them flip up and down due to the heat was awesome.
Nasa and Boeing studied also chevrons with shape memory alloys, bending towards the flow of the jet exhaust when taking off or landing to reduce noise( by introducing mixing vortices) and straighting the chevrons out of the flow when cruising to increase performance
@Pronto Was thinking that too. Maybe some extreme temperature countries would cause issues here. I mean the air higher up is cold but it might not be colder than some of the coldest places on earth?
Or similar with warmer air at ground level.
@@SonnyKnutson exactly
As a dentist, we use NiTi alloys in our dental files for root canal treatments. Really interesting to see its applications in other fields!
Is the application similar? Does applying heat to it help it “set”
Isn't it also used in braces?
@@Vadow789 Yes, in self ligated braces.
@@Vadow789 My orthodontist used NiTi in my braces about 30 years ago. I'll never forget him applying cool and watching the wire go limp then applying heat and instantly regaining the shape for my teeth.
Vascular stents!
As someone deeply passionate about material science, I found this video on NASA’s development of the Spring Tire to be incredibly fascinating. It’s amazing to see how research conducted by NASA eventually trickles back into commercial usage and benefits us all. Thank you for sharing this information with us!
Makes you realize that the government is actually more innovative than a lot of private companies. They come in after the government has spent a lot of time on research and development
@@grimaffiliations3671 Not really, but keep telling yourself that
@@grimaffiliations3671 Quite the opposite.
@@redpillsatori3020 Yes really, whether its new drugs, the internet, touchscreens or GPS, it's been government driving innovation
@@redpillsatori3020 kindly elaborate rather than simply sounding like a contrarian.
21:34 shots like this really communicate science fantastically. "put your full body weight on it" you can see Derek physically interacting with the thing and playing with it like any student might
I am preparing for a solids class test, and I will be asked about everything discussed here. This video not only improved my understanding of the topic but it went beyond discussing this new material for me, the applications, different scenarios and even the history. In short, you have made a goldmine of a video. Thank You so much, Veretasium Team. I really love your channel, and you never cease to amaze me.
that’s so awesome
Worst class of my life. It sucks but you'll enjoy it and get through it.
Hope it goes well!
What I love most about Derek is that he takes us to meet these incredible passionate people doing fascinating stuff.
Thus titanium alloy is pretty wild i just wonder what its durability is. Its like as if you had a. Ultra magic paperclip.
One of my favorite thing about being an engineer is watching other engineers geek out about whatever they are working on!
It is genuinely so much easier to talk at length to someone about a project that you've done
Hands down one of the best videos you've made and one of the best on TH-cam. So helpful. We watched this video as a family this morning with teenagers and 8 year old. They thought this was amazing. Great job inspiring science in the lives of my children.
I'm a materials science masters student and Derek presented the topic really nicely. It's close to the level I was introduced to in my bachelors. I was blown away then and guess the audience is too. Thank you!
You are correct
Those phase transition and stress strain animations would have been a game changer in the intro to materials class!
@@NarrativeOfLifeM insecure much?
@@madmat1652 Projection much?
Did you learn about bullshitonium yet?
As an engineer grad who had to work with material science this video was very facinating, and really gets you trying to think about other applications for such a material. I bet racecar companies are looking into this material for their tires. I wonder if you could use this material with appropriate heat controls to increase traction or decrease traction of the tire during the race. If so, I could easily see it being one of the biggest improvements to long-term race times as you could "deflate" the tire on harsh turns, and to slow down leading into them, and then "inflate" the tire on straights for speed.
we use it in dentistry in root canals and braces which is amazing
In the context of racing tire pressure is usually used to control heat. Low pressure tires make more heat than the same tire at a higher pressure. They are just trying to target a specific temperature for a given tire compound.
It could be cool to see it used to increase efficiency of vehicles with rubber tires. In the straights you could reduce the contact patch of the tire to reduce the coefficient of friction. In a corner it could do the inverse.
I'm sure shoes have a place here
i kinda doubt it'd be used for tires cause it seems like the coefficient of friction isnt going to be all that high
Rocket cars at the salt flats. Sort of like missiles with wheels
The stress-strain curve reminded me of my PhD work on single DNA molecules. We could grab the two ends of a single DNA molecule (with laser beams, of course), and make force-extension curves. DNA also goes through a phase transition under physical strain. At first it acts like a low stretch string, where the force increases quickly as the extension gets close to the full length of the molecule. At around 65 piconewtons (65x10^-12 N) it will “overstretch” and at a relatively constant force (hallmark of a phase transition) will stretch to ~1.7 times its normal length. When the force is reduced it will go back to its original length, although there can be significant hysteresis depending on how quickly the load is reduced. The overstretching is coupled to an unwinding of the double helix, so in effect it’s a wind up toy and can be used to apply torque, e.g. rotate a microscopic bead. DNA is a super cool material, I hope Veritasium does a video on this stuff.
I did not expect someone talking about overstretching DNA in an optical tweezer in a video about Nitinol. Greetings from a postdoc doing a lot of force extensions on RNA in magnetic and optical tweezers 😅
@@salina3192 As a layman, this video was mind-blowing enough, and now you two come in and tell us you can hold DNA with LASERS?! There's no brain left to blow anymore, it's all over the walls now!
> DNA is a super cool material
Is there any form of research going on to use DNA as a main ingredient of a material? The same way e.g. polymers are used in plastic? Or what sort of (potential) applications do these cool properties you just mentioned have? Sounds fascinating!!
What about DNA computing 🤔
Once again biology through evolution is way ahead of the curve. Awesome info. Thanks.
I vividly remember in my gen chem lab class at uni we had an experiment where we messed around with Nitinol and I was completely in shock and awe with how it was behaving. I want to say that day was the moment I fell in love with material science and now love learning and researching about polymers as a chemist!
So glad to hear Austenite and Martensite in one of your videos. I have built my career so far around these two words and it has been so rewarding. You guys probably got to see it fly on recently ;)
While watching this video I thought, this sounds like martensite. Its one of the few things I remember from college while in an engineering class. It stuck with me after a decade because it was so interesting.
My father was on the design team for the Apollo rover (and LEM,etc.) and received an award for his team’s design of the rover tires. It’s so cool to see this generations upgrades to the concepts they used back then!
Years ago I had talked with a man who also was on the team who came up with the wire wheels for the moon buggy.
I’ve never clicked on a video so fast. My great uncle was one of the lead engineers on the old moon rover tires. I’m so glad that they included it into this video and even though my uncle just passed away I know he would be thrilled that we are taking the next generation of tire for space travel for a spin.
Rip grandpa you did a good service 🫡
I hope the next gen space cars have v8s in them
@@smolltaco5667 Sorry to break it to you man, but combustion engines dont work in space. There's no oxygen for combustion up there
@@rishabhagarwal6057 who said the engine has to be exactly like the ones we have down here?
You could just seal it and put oxygen in it
@@smolltaco5667 I'm only a STEM student and not a fully fledged engineer but I suspect that would make for a pretty short ride compared to nuclear/electric vehicles
Still would be mucho cool
Very cool, I’m in medicine and we use Nitinol stents a lot- interesting to learn how they retain their shape and are able to apply the necessary radial forces to a stricture
I worked with nitinol about 25 years ago in the medical industry, when it was being heavily promoted for stents. It's a great material, lots of potential. Good stuff!
shoutout to Dr. Santo. he is clearly so passionate about the science and explains it so calmly so its easy to understand.
I screamed “NITINOL” the moment that the video started. I knew immediately what was happening. Fantastic video, as a Materials Engineering student, it’s neat to see the applications of material research, such as nitinol.
Same, tho im not a student :)
Engineers who never "tire" of their job!
oh brother
that was so terrible. never try puns again. it's not your thing
@@S1YAM its a type of humour, so it's not your thing either
That was so bad it became good
🐑🪘🐍
Did my masters thesis on modelling and simulation of shape memory alloy actuators and I’m happy you are showcasing this to a broad audience. Awesome stuff
My job is to develop heat treat processes for mainly medical device components made out of nitinol, getting the components to transition from martensitic to austenistic at specific temperatures in all sorts of shapes, but even I was able to learn more about nitinol and it’s varied uses. Really fascinating video.
I once designed a solenoid valve that used a nitinol spring. The problem I had was the fatigue life was not good. I would get springs breaking at 100k cycles and I needed 10x that. So I abandoned nitinol for spring applications. This was 15 years ago. Have there been advances that have improved the fatigue performance? I assume tires would need very good fatigue life.
@@alexkram it’s possible that the strain was too close to the maximum of roughly 8%, which over time could weaken the material to the point of breaking. 3-4% strain is ideal for longevity, and would make for a relatively life-long part.
its*
@@alexkram I'm also an engineer at a nitinol device manufacturer. A big factor in fatigue life is alloy purity. Companies now offer alloys with extremely low inclusions (ELI from Confluent, Enduro from Memry, etc.) You would have better luck with those alloys when considering fatigue. They are fairly recent advances so weren't available 15 years ago.
How expensive is the material? Could those jeep wheels be a factible product?
This video just kept getting better and better. Amazing work Derek and team! Side note: Michelan debuted airless tyres about 20 years ago, so it's a shame we're still yet to see them on passenger vehicles.
It is because airless tires have some drawbacks such as increased weight, higher rolling resistance and higher cost, which have prevented them not yet from being widely used in passenger vehicles.
@@bjarne9321 Also without a very durable/fast way to change things like vortex generators you are limiting an aircraft's maneuverability substantially let it be agility or range.
Seems like an excellent material for commercial airliners running certain routes and niche projects alike. Can't wait to see if something similar can be made with different materials and/or properties.
the reason is that they feel like sh*t to ride compared to pneumatic tires. They are utility wheels first and foremost.
Nickel and titanium are fairly expensive. I'm not sure it would be practical to use these tires on a normal consumer vehicle.
@@jonadabtheunsightly I'm not so sure about that. We're already to the point of using carbon fiber on certain parts of the engine block, namely the pistons and connecting rods. Material sciences, 3d printing, and strange new ways of looking at engineering have dramatically changed cars before, and once consider super-exotic, are now common everyday things. The tire pressure sensors in my Mazda 2 were once debuted in the Porsche 959, at one time the fastest car in the world, as such an example. it's less about cost, and more about practicality. Someone mentioned comfort. I'd rather have the occasional flat than have a ride like falling down the stairs.
This was super interesting. Would love to see a follow-up video going into some of its limitations and why we haven't seen it more in industrial use for something that was discovered in the 60s.
One of the big ones is just that it's pretty expensive
@@panner11 So were computers back then. But the costs came down massively as they improved and got better at making them.
So if it really is still so expensive, the question is what's stopping them from improving and getting better at making them?
@@asherandai2633 the material is titanium, how many things are made of titanium? Shows you how rare they are
@@pkmnogosari6091 titanium is the fourth most abundant metallic element, and the ninth most abundant element overall. It’s not rare at all, so it shouldn’t be so expensive.
@@asherandai2633
Semiconductors became cheaper because transistors were made smaller and smaller. Meaning less material was needed.
You can't apply that concept to something like gold, for example. It's expensive because it's limited.
Both Nickel and Titanium ore is very limited.
Nickel is can only be mined in a few placed on earth in significant amounts.
Same with Titanium.
Both metals have very high melting points (need a lot of energy to work them into shapes).
Hence why nickel alloys are used in jet engines (because it can handle crap tons of heat).
The bonds between Titanium and the stuff it forms a compound with in the ores require a crap ton of energy to break.
Extracting Titanium from ore will always be energy intensive. There's no way around that.
Titanium is very reactive so it needs special environments and tools to be worked. An inert atmosphere and tools that won't contaminate it.
Working with both Titanium and Nickel are both very mature technologies. Both metals are used extensively in the aviation industry.
There are 35 000 Commercial aircraft existing now, alone. Most of them making extensive use of both nickel and titanium. Everything to make it cheap in terms of energy has been done.
Then the electronics industry also uses a lot of nickel, and increasingly so with lithium batteries. Only a few countries are blessed with Nickel and Titanium ore. E.g. Russia. Hence why nickel prices are skyrocketing.
In other words, using nitinol for a lot more stuff will increase Titanium and Nickel prices. Making it more expensive, not cheaper.
The work NASA are doing is incredible!
Yeah, their gay
@@GameDevAraz cope
@@grievetan ur gay 2
@@grievetan no nasa is gay in a lot of ways. Look hoe gay the budget it 😂 but cool stuff comes out of it
Absolutely gay
I've been to NASA Glenn at their wheel development and testing center, it's really cool. I've seen those shape memory metal wheels, and the huge simulated Martian surface they have for testing. So cool.
@Don't Look At Profile * no one cares
britains roads are resembling mars with all the pot holes.
You wont believe i just say it too in a TH-cam video
@Don't Look At Profile в России не работает. Не видно картинки профиля
The question is when will it be commercially available. Living in NYC I would love a pair for my bike.
It’s technology like this that can affect entire industries that I love. There is so much that starts from space or military research that eventually is able to be used in wider applications by the public. We spend a lot in the US but stuff like this makes it worth it imo
Too bad it wouldn’t be economically feasible or cheap enough for big companies to risk investing in
@@haydnw869 Planned obsolescence will probably never let these tires get to the general public.
Worth 1 trillion dollars??
@@zriyazira *impracticality will never let these tires get to the public. These Tires may be well suited for a surface like mars, but imagine driving 100 km/h+ on asphalt. They'll deform way quicker, wont be able to handle a hard surface like roads, the heat generated by those speeds will be insane, and the average car weighing more than 1500 pounds more than a mars rover these tires just arent designed for regular consumers. And thats not even touching on the price point of these things.
@@lonesome3958 Maybe we should stop making our cars heavier and heavier, alternately. .-.
One thing of many that I apreciate about this channel is that you have made effort to adapt yourself to the science language of units... The metric system. Most others want to change the world instead of adapting.
Oddly enough, as an engineer, for some reason my first thought when encountering memory shape alloys was "this could make some *really cool seasonal artwork!* "
Be the artist you want to see!
Blooming plants but metal
This wouldn't really work, because it only goes back to it's form when getting warm. You would have to manually reset it when it gets colder outside, but it would be a cool concept.
It would write "hot" when its hot and "cold" back when the temperature drops
Wow thats actually so cool. You could make objects bend to create shade when they're warmed by the sun as well
In my opinion, the best Veritasium videos are the ones that showcase awesome lab research + practical applications. What those NASA guys are doing is just brilliant, really fantastic work. Congrats to all of them!
I'm a racer, trucks, motorcyles, sand dunes and I loved this video!
The spring interlay, layout reminds me of when I used snow chains in the sand dunes with a 1 wheel drive truck and tiny street tires, it worked.
Broken axle or just an open diff?
The google will quickly censor this question:
Why are TH-cam comments packed with circle-jerking sock puppets?
Obvious, as are the countermeasures--but the google wants fake "engagement", the better to sell clueless ads.
Damn you're a racer and you're a truck and a motorcycle and you're a sand dune?? that's awesome dude I hope I can be a sand dune one day
The title was so catchy that I thought It was some clickbait, but knowing veritasium I knew it was unlikely. I'm not disappointed. Nasa really did reinvent the wheel!
It was mentioned that NiTiNOL is being used in multiple applications, which is super neat as I was able to use it for radio astronomy applications in my graduation thesis. Making large structures with NiTiNOL is way cheaper than launching and constructing them in space. The opportunities are almost endless!
Yes, so many possibilities!
I really wonder what's the downside of this material? Is it just cost?
Cause all I've heard of it is super positive, if it is as good as it sounds we could have great developments in the near future
@@gabiferreira6864 As far as my project went, you'll order based on your specifics. I needed 1mm radius wires which had memorized as a straight line. I cut it in the size of my antenna and because of the memorized shape, I could completely bend everything to fit in the container. However, if you want to memorize custom shapes like the "Ve" or "NASA" we saw in this vid, I'd suppose you'd need to send the manufacturers specific details. My thesis was almost exactly 2 years ago, so maybe things have changed. It for sure wasn't like your typical DIY shops back then, but that made the experience feel more special
Great video! I'm doing a PhD in a lab where people explore the potential of NiTi, it's really cool to see it being diffused by you guys!
That 3d stress strain diagram was incredible thank you and well done!
I love how that Santo guy is really, really into the sciene and its effects. You can just see his love for it. Awesome.
The temperature, strain, stress graph at 10:58 was so helpful. Thank you!
Can you do "how NASA reinvented cat girls" next?
catgirls v2??? real?
@@meqativno, v…..3
What lol I don't get it
Real
@DontReadProfilePicture- Cum
The people that work at this company are some of the luckiest people in our workforce.... you can just tell how excited they all are to show what they are developing which they all seem to love. Love what you do and never work a day in your life.
It's amazing seeing so many people comment here on Nitinol being used to save lives in medical field, to design strong structures. All because NASA had to solve a very unrelated problem for a program which many believe is a cash burn. Truly amazing stuff and shows why any expenditure on science is not enough
The excitement in his face while Santo is explaining about the Exothermic reaction, and he being genuinely happy that Derik guessed it right, that was truly happy to look at 😁
"elastocaloric" is the effect that happens with rubber bands too. Its exothermic when stretched and endothermic when realized. I wanted to make a cooling unit form it for so long, now I know its not just me.
Ben Krasnow made an elastocoloric refrigerator on his channel "Applied Science". He's one of my favorite youtubers!
The effect in nitinol is unreal to feel. Look at her shocked face in the video! Now imagine that working FOR you in terms of fuel efficiency...
One more interesting application is on seismic design of structures. During my undergrad I worked at the laboratory of the University of Ottawa with 2 PhD students that were investigating how to use Nitinol rebars and external reinforcement. Goal was to to allow for additional strain without failure of structures and to potentially recover the deformation under severe seismic events =)
Yo that is honestly so cool, must've been an amazing opportunity to work with those guys
The guy demonstrating seems like an incredible teacher with the way he engaged everyone and used the audiences terms in a scientific context
Derek, what I love about your channel is how you treat your viewers like intelligent, educated human beings. You don't dumb down your content to the level of a five year old and you keep the clickbait to the minimum. Whenever I think youtube turned into a dumpster, your videos remind me that not all hope is lost.
This is dumbed down lol, nothing about the physics and thermodynamics except for "bend rod get hot"
@@Juxtaposed1Nmotion How's high school kid?
@@filipskater you tell me son.
@@Juxtaposed1Nmotion why so condescending
Woagh tire that uses no air can be punctured??? Impossible, puncture it anyway, in fact shoot it. Because we think our viewers are dumb
The last segment of shaping the nitinol to "Ve"was a great touch. Do that everytime with the things you make videos about. It adds a certain feel to the videos. Like with the cement video, you could have carved "Ve" into some permanent structure while the cement was setting.
that’d be sick
@Repent and believe in Jesus Christ Jesus aint taking these wheehls
ok mobile youtube is so fucked i cant even edit my typo this si so sad
Shoutout to Cameron Hughes for using nitinol in his fashion designs. He runs a current through the wire and the piece changes shape - length of skirt, structure of shoulders, etc. Very cool.
Wow, what a cool video and comprehensive demonstration and explanation of nitinol and its applications! Great job on this one, probably one of my favorite Veritasium videos. And thanks to everyone at Glenn and the contractors that work on this awesome tech and explained it so thoroughly!
It's so cool to see the comments and the implementation of Nitinol in widely various applications. I even used them as guide-wires for surgical instruments in spinal surgery. Crazy material.
This is amazing. Even as somebody who doesn't spend much time engaging in physics discourse, I can completely understand how revolutionary this invention is. This could genuinely change the way we do everything. From travel, to home heating, to industrial uses. Incredible.
As a welding engineer this is music to my ears!
Love Veritasium!
Cheers from Lisbon 👌
I've been lowkey obsessed with nitinol ever since needing my first pair of glasses in the late 80s and constantly having to go back and get my glasses adjusted or repaired. Too often, having fallen asleep with them still sitting on face, I'd wake up and find my eyeglasses had undergone some Level 6 trauma during the night and had jumped off the bed to escape the night terror. At best, they would sit crookedly and at uncomfortable angles to my face. After a while, the eyeglass fames would be stretched, twisted,, plasticized so hard, I'd need new fames altogether. Learning they made eyeglass frames with memory wire was like the heavens broke open and angels started singing.
I'm sure a lot of people have known of this material for a good long while, but that NASA is going to use it for the tires of the rover is new information to me and is quite exciting. My first thought for durable tires that flex was giant springs with wavy plates attached to the ends that contact the ground and then wires to thread through holes connecting contiguous plates so the wouldn't get too out of sync as the tires rotate. I did an experiment and had tubes inside the springs to keep them from bottoming out and it worked fairly well, but they were beyond heavy. This looks like a better idea.
We do agree though that if this is going to be used in tyres on airplanes and cars, they will still need to rubberise this metal right ?
I mean, i dont think this would stand up to the wear of an airplane landing or a car that brakes at full force. Also i would doubt the friction properties is the same as a rubber on tarmac tyre.
@@JohnDoe-bd5sz Why would we use it for car or airplane tires on Earth? That would be kind of wasteful, both monetarily and materially. The only reason it's even needed is for extraterrestrial exploration in adverse or non-existent atmospheres. Also, you can't rubberize metal.
@@anon_y_mousse they said they were looking into using it as car tyres and airplanes tyres as well. Tslked about it being flexible enough to omit suspension as the tyres Would act as those as well
@@JohnDoe-bd5sz I must've missed that in the video, but if so that's a really silly thing to do. Instead of paying $400 for a new set of tires we'd wind up paying $400,000. No, thank you, to that.
@@anon_y_mousse Timestamp 22:05 and forward, they talk about terrestrial application, even showing a car with one tire being this structural one
My god this is impressive, I never imagined metal replacing rubber tires and being very effective at that like wtf
One thing which wasn't covered is friction - because if the friction this material provides is close to or surpasses that of rubber, then bar astronomical manufacturing costs even with industrialization, we should technically be able to use it on vehicles.
@@dax3m oh my god
You ought to see in other dimensions, they're pioneering the use of metal for wheels!
It's funny when we started threatening super pedo Island all of a sudden the miracle tech came back out
I think it only replaces air inside rubber tires, you still need rubber to make a practical real (Earth) world tire. Otherwise if you were to just use the mesh, small debris would make their way into the tires, and be impossible to get out. That's why they still had rubber in that bicycle demo.
Although simple, wheels are taken for granted so much. They’re so awesome and a great invention
Great video :)
Why not use in tires on earth? Because it would put companies out of business. Everything on earth they make to be replaced, over and over and over again. $$$$$$
@@briteeyes2133 watch from 22:08
@Harmish :) yes, they know they would work on earth but I seriously doubt they would mass manufacture them for the average man on the streets. Much like the free energy Tesla discovered or the cars people invented that ran on water, it would cause the shutdown of major corporations. There are so many great inventions not available to the average man. Many inventions that the govt will buy the patent just so it cannot be manufactured for use by civilians.
@@briteeyes2133 impracticality will never let these tires get to the public. These Tires may be well suited for a surface like mars, but imagine driving 100 km/h+ on asphalt. They'll deform way quicker, wont be able to handle a hard surface like roads, the heat generated by those speeds will be insane, and the average car weighing more than 1500 pounds more than a mars rover these tires just arent designed for regular consumers. And thats not even touching on the price point of these things.
@@briteeyes2133 it's hard to appreciate just how good pneumatic rubber tyres are. The rubber fulfills three roles at the same time (containing the air, deforming around unevennesses, and giving traction to the ground), whilst the air manages to support a big weight with very little obstruction to the deformations / rolling.
Those nitinol tyres do a formidable job at replacing this functionality, but they can't do it all as well as pneumatics. Unless you need your tyres to work at insane temperatures or survive deliberate perforation (and can't use liquid sealant), there's just no point.
I’ve been having such a problem with my bike tires being shot out. I’m glad someone finally has a solution!
I'm not sure, but I believe you don't need to heat it with a torch. If you run current through the wire it will heat up and return to it's original shape. That means you can have a solid state motor, and if you use many strands in parallel you could make it quite powerful.
Yeah any source of heat will do. The problem with your idea of a motor though is whether the energy required to make it contract is the same as the energy required to stretch it, if so then it could limit its usefulness.
Using it for some kind of artificial muscle might work well though.
Yea that was how they applied it to flaperon controls replacing hydraulics, mentioned in this video. Though I think it was a heating element instead. A current would probably be even more reliable
@@conorstewart2214That's not a problem, it's just physics.
@@aminulhussain2277 what is your point? It is a problem with the idea of using something like this as a solid state motor.
My college roommate’s father (last name was MacArthur) made some engineering / design contributions to the Apollo Lunar rover wheel. I don’t recall any of the details, but he had a picture of his father holding the metal mesh wheel. :)
I'd learned about Nitinol many years ago (High school, I think), then I forgot the name. But not the properties of the material! Now the two are reunited in my brain! Thank you Veritasium!
Ok, this is the first time I hear about Nitinol. I've not been this enthralled by the science behind a material before. It''s actually extremely interesting. I wanna know more! :D
I had a small piece of it 40 years ago. I read about it in a Science magazine and they had a contest.
It's*
I always love it when a Veritasium video drops, this is peak educational youtube
Wow, that is absolutely fascinating!! I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother once questioned NASA and why anything they did was necessary in terms of practical application in our daily lives. I wish she was still around to see this.
Edit: For the record, I've never questioned their technological advances! Lol thanks for the supportive comments, though! 😅
Solar Panels, telecoms etc.
@@0x0michael weather prediction.... lots of advances in commercial aviation, etc..
I mean we'd never have a bunch of rover selfies from Mars happen if it weren't for NASA in the 60s :^)
They've had a long history of RND with other industries think aviation, military, weather, medical, foreign affairs, geography, chemistry, biology, metal alloys etc etc. Their international space station is special as well because it can remove some of the contamination that earth has on certain experiments. We'll most probably never know the true scope of how much NASA has influenced everyday tech that we use every day.
@@zakf2929 whats RND?
This is why investing in space is so important. The technological developments can’t be understated
Good Job "Science Guy". Thank you Derek for being the guiding light in the pursuit of knowledge.
I wish I had this guy's life, he does some fascinating things and explains them so simply.
Edited: OK to respond to the super logical commenters, let's change life* to job.
you have *your* life. that's far more unique
go ahead and try something like it on your own then
Me too! Always learning!
Thats such a dumb things to say to another human, i wish i had your life, so low and so sad
@@mv9197 Don't be judgy dude.
This could be awesome to the automobile industry also. You can dampen an impact by a huge amount if you use this material in certain areas of the vehicle. Amazing material!
You would also dampen the forward motion of the car. Not very "awesome"
@@ferdinandgleinser2681 the idea is for extra crash safety etc
Yes your right 👍 also there are lots of extreme heats at speed of continuous long journeys as well as the reverse in colder conditions in various continents as well without including seasons seasonal change that would also flip vary condition. @@ferdinandgleinser2681
Im still blown away that man went to the moon and immediately felt the overwhelming desire to drive on it. That is just bananas. Driving a nasa built dune buggy in 1/6 of earths gravity. Part of me is surprised they didn't drag a plywood ramp out of the lander to make a sweet jump.
As an iron worker this is very interesting! I wonder if we'll ever use it for super specific applications! Some of the crazy modern designs that are super expensive to build could definitely benefit from this. If it has enough tensile strenth than theres many applications it vould be used for. Probably too expensive still for now though if nasa is still working out the kinks (pun intended)
Dude. This video couldn't have been better timed for me. I'm literally replacing the tires on my E-Bike right now, while watching this. My town doesn't clean it's streets well and there's broken glass everywhere. Most of my innertubes lately have been One-Ride-Wonders. I would LOVE to put those Bike Tires to the test in a real-world environment.
Look for Kevlar tire liners. They saved me a mint when I bicycled across the US
Schwalbe Marathons. I just ignore glass and ride over it, only flats I've had were from riding up staircases (snakebites)
This is truly amazing science journalism. I had no idea such materials existed.
15:02 specifically the part about stretching the nitinol wire, This has to be one if the coolest things in science I've ever seen. so often we see concepts like this visualized in relativity abstract ways, that make it hard to connect whats scientifically happening to what we see/ experience in reality even just on the microscopic scale- never mind molecular. but this is one of the only times ive seen a process like this where you could LITERALLY HEAR the molecular structure changing as you stretch it. thats absolutely insane to me, in such a cool way.
I’m so thankful that you exist .. I’m always watching all of your videos without once taking my eyes of the screen .. love everything you do man!! Keep it going please !
The fact that I understand Young's modulus way better in the 15 seconds of explaining than the 6 months of learning it in my A levels syllabus 😃
The animations on this channel (ex. 9:06) are great. This particular episode only had a few seconds of it, but generally they remind my of the animations from 2014's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (hosted by NdGT). A real sign of the effort and quality put into these edu-docs. Excellent work!
Other comments mention NiTi alloys in dentistry - points worth considering.
I had my first root canal when I was 19, as a result of an infection contracted on vacation which killed the tooth's root. That was in 1971. Modern dentistry in those days used a silver alloy to fill the canal. Later experience proved that, even enclosed within a tooth, the alloy would eventually rust and need refilling. I had excellent dentists, for which I am thankful.
So look upon yet another of the hundreds (or thousands) of revolutions in materials sciences that have happened over the past 50 years, that can be directly traced to work done at NASA and for space projects. Detractors of NASA deserve hard rebuffs for blathering when they know so little, and bad-mouthing without understanding that imperfections are a reality of everything in life, institutions included. I credit NASA's meticulousness in work procedures as worthy examples to learn from everywhere in science, economics, and business. I don't advocate simply copying them. I do advocate adapting and reapplying. After all, the new tires are also an example of that, even within NASA.
As a mechanical engineer, I find this fascinating. The stress/strain curve is an important measure of a material's mechanical properties. Of course, the stress applied is tensile stress. Compressive stress and shear stress are also important.
How does the stress strain graph dip at the yeild strength? Is the tension lower because the atoms are moving or does the cross sectional area get larger?
@@ZZZ77- Cross sectional area usually doesn't get larger. It would get smaller. The degree to which this happens is called Poisson's ratio (think of pulling taffy). The dip is because it's taking less stress to cause strain.
Would love to see the analysis of nitinol under compression and shear stress. And an inclusion of the strain energy calculation. I do not know how strain energy transitions during failure nor during the phase change in nitinol, but it seems reasonable that the strain energy = heat energy during the phase transition. Would love to know the answer.
what is your opinion on this being used on everyday road cars? wouldnt the lateral forces be too much for this type of tire?. The vertical loads seems find to deal with but when it comes to cornering at high speeds, the 8% is surely not enough.
@@penart8079 In ordinary use, cars aren't subject to the same type of stress that NASA was concerned about, namely traveling over very bumpy terrain. Cornering stress is quite different. The video said that the material might be suitable for use in landing gear, which is subject to quite a bit of stress, which would imply that it could also be used for cars. Look at how much the bar is being bent at 17:16 without a problem. So the question would be how much material would be needed for the application, how much would it weigh, and how much would it cost.
23:07 small note: changing the pressure can actually be advantageous when changing from tar/concrete roads to gravel & sand bc you need more surface area to grab ground and not sink in. If we had a NiTiNol tires with different modi that would be revolutionary
offroading does like 5 PSI
Such a great video! I loved how you seamlessly incorporated principles of engineering in an easy to understand way.
When you started bending the tube to extreme levels and it was changing temperatures from it... Amazing. I would buy one of those tubes to play with for sure. Incredible that materials like this exist and we're just now finding what could be near limitless uses for it.
I was wondering why this all felt familiar. I'm an ME grad at the University of Akron and I've seen Smart Tire Co around, it didn't click in my head until I saw Dr. Heather Oravec at 20:35. It's really cool to see them out in the real world instead of in the college setting :)
Fantastic. Been curious about Nitinol for over half a century and this is the best bit on it I've seen yet. Thanks
It's so cool seeing how the things I'm learning as an engineering undergrad are being talked about here as well.
what branch eng are you studying??
This is good presentation, of the long-term colonization problems, to the Moon or Mars. I am one of the last-alive design engineers of the original Lunar Roving Vehicles. One of the main problems we had, other than impact deformation & breakage, was the "abrasive wear" due to the Lunar dust. In actual testing, ordinary steel wires, of various alloys, only lasted a few hundred cycles in simulated Lunar dust. Vacuumized dust has similar properties to diamond dust. As a result, it became necessary to "coat" the wires with a sacrificial coating (zinc for LRV), in order to prevent "sawing" of the wires during flexure. It was thought at that time, that the astronaut's suits could be punctured by any sticking out wires ends. This became relevant, when a fender was knocked off, and a repair became relevant. The entire wire-design of the original LRV wheels was based on the ability to withstand wire breakage, for the duration of the mission. Other coatings were tried, but were too time-lengthy to implement, at that time. We only had about 14+months to do this. This presentation is inadequate, in that it shows testing on Earth, in conditions which cannot exist on Moon or Mars surfaces. Modern materials mathematical modeling is showing that these wire-like Nitinol wheels will have only limited useability, unless more durability is built into them, using other means. On the Moon, in the dark, the crystallization temperatures of the materials will dictate their survivability. It is probable that only some kind of "composite" structural material will survive, for very long. NASA has videos of the various impact and deformation studies which we did, and there is material available about the dust abrasiveness at their sites, and from the still remaining Boeing engineers. Bruno.
alloys and material science in general is so freaking cool. If you track the progression of industrial technology throughout history, a lot of it had to do with working our way up the "material technology tree" per say, since even if we had an idea for something, we didn't necessarily have the material science tech to actually make it happen, and then at every new breakthrough you then unlock so many new possibilities.
There’s not a veritasium video that I won’t instantly watch. Your content is always fantastic in ways that this comment could never convey. Keep up all the hard work ❤️
Yes typically the videos are great. Except when the video is an ad disguised as educational content, like the waymo video. Or when he gets lazy and has nothing interesting to say, like that one where they dropped rocks in the sand from a helicopter.