Discussion Page - Idea #146

#146: Gluable Particles, A Sequel

In Idea #53, we proposed a particle that would glue on some stimulus and adhere strongly to each other.

Well, in one of my attempts to do this, I came out with this:

It is a very small metallic sphere, the core, and attached to its surface are thin metalic filaments, that are initially curly, close to surface. They resemble a lot curly hair. Well this hair, once the sphere is charged, turn into a spike due to charge repulsion. 

The idea is that when this material is not charged the spheres don't particulary bond to each other. There may be some occasional tangling, but it is residual, When charged, however the spikes intertwine each other forming a cohesive blob.

I'm not exactly sure of what happens if you remove charge at this point. Would the metal retain a memory and the filaments curl back, adhering the spheres even more? I don't know.  

BANNER IMAGE CREDITS: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko, R. Jansen 

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