Human bones are amazing—seriously, they’re incredibly cool—but up until recently, it’s been hard to engineer a synthetic material that replicates the super-strong structure of the real thing. Now, scientists in Germany are using a 3D printer to do just that—and it could mean a breakthrough for how we build everything from architecture to spacecraft.
A new study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at a fundamental problem with material sciences: The trade-off between weight and strength. Generally, materials that are very strong tend to be very heavy—like steel—while lighter materials are less stable.
via Gizmodo
