Six Substances that Wipe Their Ass with the Laws of Physics.

It worries me that somebody watched Terminator 2's T-1000 and thought "we should totally try to make one of those" but oh well.

2392651 lel

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We totally should make one of those.

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I'd spray myself with LiquiGlide

2392651 Heh, remineds me of something...

Enjoy.

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Either the best sex you'll ever have or the worst.

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Awesome.

2392651 I'm going to ignore the fact that the link is Cracked.com, just once.

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All of these are merely misconceptions made by those who wrote the article. The substances don't break the laws of physics—rather, the authors didn't understand the physics behind the substances.

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It's good to know you'll always be around to be our "that guy".

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#6. Graphene isn't a plastic. A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids that are moldable. Intrinsic graphene can be described as a one-atom thick layer of inorganic graphite and is a semi-metal or zero-gap semiconductor.

#5. LiquiGlide isn't truly frictionless by a long shot. It is a liquid-impregnated surface, which consists of two distinct layers. The first is a highly textured surface consisting of a matrix of features spaced sufficiently close to stably contain the second layer which is an impregnating liquid that fills in the spaces between the features. Perfectly reasonable.

#4. Spray-on batteries involve nanostructured films that grow directly on a substrate and then in layers on top of each other. The process allows one to "spray-paint" a positive electrode, then a separator/electrolyte, then the negative electrode. It can then be cut and stacked in various form factors.

#3. Ah, self-healing materials. Admittedly very cool—all the "smart materials" are pretty awesome, really.

#2. What, you mean like nickel-titanium "nitinol memory metal" that we've known about since 1959? I'm not surprised—it's DNA; a single gram of the stuff can store approximately 425 million terabytes of information. That's about as much as over a hundred million 4-terabyte hard drives. More than enough data storage to program a material to make such simple movements.

#1. We don't know exactly what StarLite is made of, but it is said to contain a variety of organic polymers and co-polymers with both organic and inorganic additives, including borates and small quantities of ceramics and other special barrier ingredients—up to 21 in all. And the mystery isn't because the material is some kind of "inexplicable physics-breaking supermaterial"—it's because the creator was so extremely protective of the composition for fear of losing control of the rights to the material that he did not permit samples to get out of his sight so that they could not be whisked away and reverse engineered behind his back. Let's hear it for extreme paranoia!

On the other hand, I think that this inaccuracy is just the effect of writing to attract readers and translating the science into terms regular people can understand.

2392651 I can finally sate my fantasies of secksing a volcano.

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It's not quite a toothpick but it'll do.