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Pykrete
Pykrete is a frozen ice composite, originally made of approximately 14% sawdust or some other form of wood pulp (such as paper) and 86% ice by weight (6 to 1 by weight). During World War II, Geoffrey Pyke proposed it as a candidate material for a supersized aircraft carrier for the British Royal Navy. Pykrete features unusual properties, including a relatively slow melting rate due to its low thermal conductivity, as well as a vastly improved strength and toughness compared to ordinary ice. These physical properties can make the material comparable to concrete, as long as the material is kept frozen. Pykrete is slightly more difficult to form than concrete, as it expands during the freezing process. However, it can be repaired and maintained using seawater as a raw material. The mixture can be moulded into any shape and frozen, and it will be tough and durable, as long as it is kept at or below freezing temperature. Resistance to gradual creep or sagging is improved by lowering ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Habakkuk
Project Habakkuk or Habbakuk (spelling varies) was a plan by the British during the Second World War to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice) for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic, which were beyond the flight range of land-based planes at that time. The plan was to create what would have been the largest ship ever at 600 m long and would indeed have been much bigger than even USS ''Enterprise'', the largest naval vessel ever, at 342 m long.The idea came from Geoffrey Pyke, who worked for Combined Operations Headquarters. After promising scale tests and the creation of a prototype on Patricia Lake, Jasper National Park, in Alberta, Canada, the project was shelved due to rising costs, added requirements, and the availability of longer-range aircraft and escort carriers which closed the Mid-Atlantic gap that the project was intended to address. History Initial concept Geoffrey Pyke was an old friend of J. D. Bernal and ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Pyke
Geoffrey Nathaniel Joseph Pyke (9 November 1893 – 21 February 1948) was an English journalist, educationalist, and inventor. Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from internment in Germany during World War I. He had travelled to Germany under a false passport, and was soon arrested and interned. During the Second World War, Pyke proposed the newly invented material, pykrete, for the construction of the ship Habakkuk. Early life Pyke's father, Lionel Edward Pyke, was a Jewish lawyer who died when Pyke was only five, leaving his family with no money. His mother quarrelled with relatives and made life "hell" for her children. She sent Pyke to Wellington, then a public school mainly for the sons of Army officers. At his mother's insistence, Pyke maintained the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew. He became an atheist when he was thirteen. The persecution he suffered instilled in him a hatred of and contempt for "The Establishment". After two years at Wellington, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Perutz
Max Ferdinand Perutz (19 May 1914 – 6 February 2002) was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979. At Cambridge he founded and chaired (1962–79) The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), fourteen of whose scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Perutz's contributions to molecular biology in Cambridge are documented in ''The History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4 (1870 to 1990)'' published by the Cambridge University Press in 1992. Early life and education Perutz was born in Vienna, the son of Adele "Dely" (Goldschmidt) and Hugo Perutz, a textile manufacturer. His parents were Jewish by ancestry, but had baptised Perutz in the Catholic religion. Although Perutz rejected religion and was an atheist in his later year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithfield, London
Smithfield, properly known as West Smithfield, is a district located in Central London, part of Farringdon Without, the most westerly ward of the City of London, England. Smithfield is home to a number of City institutions, such as St Bartholomew's Hospital and livery halls, including those of the Butchers' and Haberdashers' Companies. The area is best known for the Smithfield meat market, which dates from the 10th century, has been in continuous operation since medieval times, and is now London's only remaining wholesale market. Smithfield's principal street is called ''West Smithfield'', and the area also contains London's oldest surviving church, St Bartholomew-the-Great, founded in AD 1123. The area has borne witness to many executions of heretics and political rebels over the centuries, as well as Scottish knight Sir William Wallace, and Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants' Revolt, among many other religious reformers and dissenters. Smithfield Market, a Grade II li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Dome - Foto Bart Van Overbeeke 28484
Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaque bluish-white color. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far away as the Oort cloud objects. Beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice. It is abundant on Earth's surfaceparticularly in the polar regions and above the snow lineand, as a common form of precipitation and deposition, plays a key role in Earth's water cycle and climate. It falls as snowflakes and hail or occurs as frost, icicles or ice spikes and aggregates from snow as glaciers and ice sheets. Ice exhibits at least eighteen phases ( packing geometries), depending on temperature and pressure. When water is cooled rapidly (quenching), up to three types of amorphous ice can form depending on its hist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
