...or whatever it is that sci fi writers call transparent metal: At the risk of going off on a tangent immediately, I will mention that glass is a pretty simple thing--superheated sand, basically. We've had it for hundreds and hundreds of years. And they're only just NOW figuring out the most basic things about it!? Sorta makes you wonder about some of the more nebulous causes they are presently advocating. That said, the idea is pretty cool. Just think what they could do for visibility in, say, a tank if they could make the turret transparent. Or how much stronger cars could be if the windows were made of steel.
I learned in chemistry class last semester that it's a slow-moving liquid, that it breaks in irregular pieces because of irregular bond strengths in the material, and that its atoms are not arranged in a particular way because the interactions between them don't allow for that (they're arranged irregularly as the glass solidifies).
Tsk! Scotty gave Dr. Nichols the formula for transparent aluminum almost a quarter of a century ago -!
You'd think somebody in the chain of command would have piped up sooner or later. "With all due respect and I don't mean to question the judgment of TPTB, but maybe the reason why our troops can't hit the broad side of a barn is that their helmets are opaque . . . ?!"
