Materials question

Salts are usually somewhat brittle, which may or may not be a good thing depending on what the desired use is.
 
Nabster said:
Salts are usually somewhat brittle, which may or may not be a good thing depending on what the desired use is.
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Depends on the crystal structure, I guess. Normal salt, as far as I know, has cubic crystals. Maybe another salt with a more peculiar crystal shape would do the trick.
 
Really depends how potent a liquid you want to use... if it's liquid red hot magma then I suggest most metals.
 
What type of "hardness" to you mean? Compression strength? Torsional rigidity?
 
Torsional for sure. It's nothing that would take an impact like the slide of a pistol. Even with torsional, it would not have to be that high.
 
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Okay, so if you're not looking for compression strength, we know you're likely not looking to make a bullet that will dissolve in blood. *he says after eying-up your avatar* :lol:
 
Nope, nothing with acidic properties. The dissolve time would involve the amount of the compound or material. It would be thin. So, no more than 2 minutes at most. It has to be unrecoverable and untracable once used. Or, at least pass as something you would find everyday.

I promise, it's nothing illegal that I'm researching. I sure as hell would not ask in a public forum if I were. :)
 
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Hmm....food and medical industries use lots of dissolvable plastic, as in edible packaging. Could something from that direction be of any use ? Think for example vitamin capsules and such. Of course stomach acids are quite strong so I don't know how that sort of stuff would dissolve in water.
 
perhaps a composite material with those dissolvable plastics and a sort of Epoxy like polymer which bonds with the dissolvable plastic fibers and also dissolvse in liquid.
*grabs his fundamentals of materials science and engineering book :p
 
Hmmm. I also need it to appear as natural as possible in testing. Say you have a tile of it and throw it in water. It dissolves in a minute or two. When the water is tested, it's shows that something is foreign to the water, but, nothing abnormal either. If it were a salt, the water would simply have a high concentrationof sodium.

Damn, this is getting difficult, but, that's ok.
 
JohnnyRacer said:
Hmm, interesting, I wonder if it would have enough mass to give it weight...
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Sorry but I'm going to have to make fun of you for this one. That statement makes no sense at all. Everything with mass has weight in a gravitational field. Whether it'll have enough weight for what you want is the question.
 
It's ok, thanks for the correction. Yes, weight is an issue with what I'm thinking about.

I may have to accept the fact that there may be no such material either.
 
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JohnnyRacer said:
It's ok, thanks for the correction. Yes, weight is an issue with what I'm thinking about.

I may have to accept the fact that there may be no such material either.
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The problem here is the dissolving time: pretty much anything dissolves with enough time (d'uh!). I mean stuff like soap for instance. But 2 minutes is not even nearly enough for even a thin piece of soap to dissolve.

What kind of forces does this mysterious material have to withstand ? Just roughly, I mean stuff like if you put in a backpack and it won't break, does it have to withstand to be thrown into a wall...

The only fast dissolving thing that pops into my mind are these vitamin and what have you tablets:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVwZcaYo4AI[/YOUTUBE]

I bet you could make those into any size and shape one can imagine. But again, what kind of forces can those things take, I have no idea.
 
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