Metal

Liquid Metal Battery, a company pursuing a breakthrough battery design, has attracted Bill Gates and an oil driller as seed investors.

Many battery companies are working to improve existing technology, but the founders of Liquid Metal Battery are taking an unusual approach that they hope will slash energy storage costs and deliver batteries able to store several hours of wind and solar power. The target of the company, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is to have demonstration systems connected to the grid in three to five years, executives said. An official announcement of the series … Read more

Magico, based in Berkeley, Calif., has established itself as a major American high-end speaker manufacturer in just a few years. The company builds state-of-the-art speakers with truly innovative technology. I've listened to a lot of large and not-so-large Magico speakers over the years, and was never less than astonished by their sound. The company is just now introducing its smallest speaker ever, the Q1 ($24,950 per pair). The Q1's cabinet is an extensively braced-aluminum-and-copper design.

It's a small monitor speaker, but it's sold with an integrated stand. Mounted on the stand, the Q1 measures 44 … Read more

WORCESTER, Mass.--The electronic waste piling up in our closets and basements holds valuable material that could be used to make something new, as is the case with old newspapers and plastic bottles. The challenge is ensuring that e-waste gets recycled without threatening public health.

Earlier this week, I took a tour of a small electronics recycler here that caters to people who want to be sure that their e-waste is handled responsibly, rather than be shipped to a destination with unknown or unverified practices. The center, operated by Metech Recycling, provided a peek into how everyday products find a … Read more

Think Corning's Gorilla Glass is the toughest around? Maybe not for long. A research team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology has created a metallic glass that's not just tough, but also strong--a combination known as damage tolerance.

While most of us use toughness and strength interchangeably, they are actually mutually exclusive and, in most cases, inversely proportionate to one another. Building materials like bricks are strong in the sense that hitting them will not result in a change in shape. But once you apply enough force to create a shear line, they break.

Rubber tires, on the other hand, deform easily with relatively little energy, but are extremely tough as it takes much more force to rip the material to shreds.

The metallic glass, detailed in this week's issue of Nature Materials, is actually a micro-alloy made from a combination of palladium, a small fraction of silver, and a mixture of other metalloids. The researchers claim the material has shown itself in tests to have a combination of strength and toughness not previously seen in any other material. … Read more

I was never a fan of cassettes; they were the MP3s of their time. Neither format ever sounded good to me.

Prerecorded tapes from the record companies were the lowest of the low. True, they were less expensive than LPs in the '70s and '80s, but you could make much better-sounding cassettes yourself by dubbing LPs to cassette.

Cassettes were only slightly more durable than LPs and were definitely subject to wear. Also, while the cassette you made might sound decent enough on YOUR cassette deck, there was no guarantee it would sound OK on anybody else's machine (tape … Read more

China cut its first batch of rare earth export quotas for next year by more than one-tenth, in the face of a threat by the United States to complain to the World Trade Organization over the export limits.

China's Commerce Ministry allotted 14,446 metric tons of quotas to 31 companies, which was 11.4 percent less than the 16,304 metric tons it allocated to 22 companies in the first batch of 2010 quotas a year ago.

The ministry said in a short statement that it had added more producer companies to the quota list, but has cut … Read more

analysis DETROIT--Major automakers are scrambling to strip hundreds of pounds off future pickup trucks in an effort to meet new U.S. standards for fuel economy without sacrificing strength or towing capability.

The new mandates take effect in 2016, giving automakers such as Ford and General Motors just one design cycle to make significant changes that will require costly steel substitutes including aluminum, new steel alloys, and magnesium.

Automakers are faced with having to pass on those higher costs to consumers who have come to associate mass with performance.

"There is a lot of hand-wringing in the industry right … Read more

The World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the United States said on Tuesday they were pressing for solutions to concerns China may be exploiting its stranglehold on rare earth metals, crucial in the making of everything from portable phones to wind turbines.

Officials and industry executives in Berlin and Washington warned of severe repercussions from a scarcity of the minerals with magnetic, luminescent, and other properties that go into products such as hybrid cars, solar panels, and windmills. The dominance of China, which produces 97 percent of the world's supply of rare earths, has been well-known for years, … Read more

Earlier this month, CNET editor Josh Lowensohn posted about how Apple was reportedly having some issues with the glass back on the iPhone 4, which was proving to be less durable than some had hoped. Now several sites are detailing how you can replace the glass back of your iPhone 4 with a metal one.

Removing the back--or "rear panel" as Apple calls it--is pretty simple (see ifixit.com's tutorial). And in just a few minutes you can swap in an inexpensive metal back for $12.99 from Hong Kong. Other backs are available, but Unpluggd says … Read more