How NASA Reinvented The Wheel

Can you do "how NASA reinvented cat girls" next?

As an engineer I’ve known of nitinol for a while, did some labs with it in college. But I never saw the example of bending the nitinol pipe in half and have it return to shape. Awesome material

They use this metal in orthodontia too. The wires for braces are made out of this. They are “programmed” as the parabolic shape that the orthodontist wants, then bent and tied into the braces. The heat of the mouth (aka your body heat) makes the wire “want” to return to its original shape, thereby pulling your teeth into the proper position! I was amazed when my orthodontist showed me this, it was super cool to see as a kid.

My father was on the design team for the Apollo rover (and LEM,etc.) and received an award for his team’s design of the rover tires. It’s so cool to see this generations upgrades to the concepts they used back then!

I discovered a congenital defect in my heart at age 34. It was a penny sized hole in the two top chambers called the atria. They used a nitinol device to close the hole and allow heart lining cells to grow into it. This stuff saved me!

I love that these 2 engineers are so happy with their work, they look genuinely happy.

In the first 10 minutes, they basically covered several key topics of a Materials Science degree in a very interesting and memorable way. I really wished this video was available a few years ago when I was still in uni...

one of my customers was one of the engineers that was hired to study Nitinol in the late 60’s and 70’s he’s still inventing today and is currently close to a breakthrough in magnetics

Veritasium videos are the type that don't need any fancy high pace over energetic editing needed. I will watch the video all through out no matter what

I had NiTiNOL wires in my orthodontics as a teenager. They worked to slowly, continually push the teeth into their new positions, rather than needing painful tightening every couple of weeks. Quite an impressive material!

Engineers who never "tire" of their job!

These types of videos is what keeps me going through mechanical engineering school. Seeing things I learned about being applied in real world situations, but also reedeming the knowledge I gained and thought was useless during materials courses.

We need more stuff like this to help the public understand that NASA is not an expense, but a great investment that pays back more than double.

I did a report on nitinol in 8th grade science...41 years ago...nice to see this video explain its properties even further. Cool!!

Hands down one of the best videos you've made and one of the best on YouTube. So helpful. We watched this video as a family this morning with teenagers and 8 year old. They thought this was amazing. Great job inspiring science in the lives of my children.

Wow, what a cool video and comprehensive demonstration and explanation of nitinol and its applications! Great job on this one, probably one of my favorite Veritasium videos. And thanks to everyone at Glenn and the contractors that work on this awesome tech and explained it so thoroughly!

I love the excitement and positive energy from all those engineers! They’re really happy to show their work.

Fantastic. Been curious about Nitinol for over half a century and this is the best bit on it I've seen yet. Thanks

21:34 shots like this really communicate science fantastically. "put your full body weight on it" you can see Derek physically interacting with the thing and playing with it like any student might

The stress-strain curve reminded me of my PhD work on single DNA molecules. We could grab the two ends of a single DNA molecule (with laser beams, of course), and make force-extension curves. DNA also goes through a phase transition under physical strain. At first it acts like a low stretch string, where the force increases quickly as the extension gets close to the full length of the molecule. At around 65 piconewtons (65x10^-12 N) it will “overstretch” and at a relatively constant force (hallmark of a phase transition) will stretch to ~1.7 times its normal length. When the force is reduced it will go back to its original length, although there can be significant hysteresis depending on how quickly the load is reduced. The overstretching is coupled to an unwinding of the double helix, so in effect it’s a wind up toy and can be used to apply torque, e.g. rotate a microscopic bead. DNA is a super cool material, I hope Veritasium does a video on this stuff.