Here’s a brilliant invention out of Rochester University in Rochester, New York. With this new invention of hydrophobic material, we can possibly look forward to a future in which our bikes stay spotlessly clean as they repel rain and mud!
Chunlei Guo has invented a super hydrophobic material (a metal that is completely water repellent). It’s not a chemical coating, like Teflon – the water-repelling quality is an intrinsic part of the actual hydrophobic material.
The material is so hydrophobic that water bounces off it. Here’s a video about this amazing invention.
Note that the hydrophobic material doesn’t just repel water – the water takes dust away with it as it bounces off! So it’s basically self-cleaning as well. Chunlei Guo hopes that his invention will make it possible to flush toilets with almost no water (in parts of the world that don’t have much water).
I think that’s great, but I admit to being more excited about the idea of having rain and mud being completely repelled from my bike (which would be made from this hydrophobic material). Imagine cycling through a rainstorm and arriving home with a spotless bike! I explain a pretty simple way to clean and lube your chain here, but wouldn’t it be great if it NEVER GOT DIRTY?
And this principle would surely work to make truly hydrophobic cycling glasses too. My Adidas cycling goggles (reviewed here) come close, but sooner or later when it’s raining, they get too wet and I have to take them off.
Read the whole article, “Multifunctional surfaces produced by femtosecond laser pulses,” in the Journal of Applied Physics on January 20, 2015 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4905616). It can be accessed at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/117/3/10.1063/1.4905616
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