Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] shapeable incompressable filler..any ideas?

[Erik Michael Muller <emm03@uow.edu.au>]

Hello Marcus, and everyone.
Thanks for your ideas..once again, the combined brain power of this
mailing list has awe-inspired me!
It is interesting, Marcus, I had a major revelation last night duing a
bout of insomnia, and it occured to me that superballs were not very
compressable (high resitituion too).  

My brain rambled on and  I thought it might be possible to either use
a big slab of neoprene rubber (not the foamy compressable wetsuit
kind, but the solid rubber variety). although I think this might be
expensive, so I thought I might be able to mix up a plaster+granulated
neoprene conglomerate.  Some serious work would have to go into
checking exactly what ratio would be the most durable, though even an
integrity (sp) failure here wouldnt matter (i.e. it has no airspaces
and cant crush, even if it cracks I wouldnt like it too, just because
it looks messy), since the only function of the stuff is to fill
volume. 

The reason a conglomerate might be more useful is that rubber is less
dense than water, whereas plaster (which IS waterproof) is more dense.
 The combined mix (depending on the ratio) might be at a similar
density to water.
Although the durability is not a safety concern, I would still like to
vary the rubber/plaster ratio and test it out (since I suspect that
plaster IS slightly porus!)..anyone with a boat who wants to sink a
few test bricks of this stuff to a few atms?


-------------------
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I was reading the machinery's handbook back at work and i found out
that 
> rubber,
> although very elastic, isn't at all that compressable.  Could Erik
use lots 
> of rubber band
> in this purpose, maybe bonded as needed to keep it in shape?  Any 1$
store 
> could
> provide lots of them.
> 
> just a thought,
> Marcus
> 
> 
> ----------
>                         ALLEN'S AXIOM
>                 When all else fails, read the directions.
>