Jell-O or Aerospace Material?

Have you ever looked at Jell-O and thought, “What if you took out all the liquid from Jell-O?”. If so, you have a lot in common with the inventors of aerogel! This material was made by doing just that!?

Samuel Kistler was able to remove the liquid component but ran into issues with keeping the integrity of the solid skeleton. By placing the solid skeleton in a beaker of liquid, the solid skeleton remains intact.? From there he used an autoclave (heat treatment) to get the substance to a critical point, where the liquid turned into a semifluid of gas and liquid. With this method, he was able to have the skeleton remain intact while removing almost all the liquid. This light and 99.98% air substance is known as an aerogel.?

When seen in its physical form, the shade and transparency is very versatile, changing with different lighting and backgrounds. When put in direct sunlight, it will appear as a yellow shade, like a sunset. And when placed behind a white background, it appears almost invisible, blending in with the white. This is because the small nano particles making up the aerogel will reflect blue light in a scattered way. It has even been used for many Mars missions, proving to be a great aerospace material due to its high thermal insulation. Don’t overlook this small and mighty material!

If you’d like to learn more, I found this neat video by Veritasium on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeJ9q45PfD0&t=499s