materiO’

Coca-Cola, who would probably spend their time and money collecting its billions of cans and used bottles, has just launched a limited edition of 8000 bottles of StarWars with an OLED animation directly printed on the label. Lightsabers illuminate in red or blue as soon as the bottle is seized. More than the promotional operation for the release of the last episode of the saga, it is the technical feat of integration of a battery and an OLED film in a simple paper label that we wanted to highlight here. More information on the database, of course.

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The TOTAH Gallery (New York) is currently exhibiting 9 metallic sculptures by artist Aleksandar Duracevic with extraordinary moving rainbow reflections: We do not have the chance to see it in person, but to read the testimonies, these panels are so reflective "that it may be difficult to photograph them without capturing a curved, doubled or crumbled image", and that they manage to grab and play with any external light source, like a vehicle headlight passing very fast in the street. The secret of these flickering rainbow reflections? Stainless steel plates treated with diamond dust (among other things) and exposed to extreme heat, for a dazzlingly coloured fog!

How to bend at a right angle a classic float glass sheet (the glass of your window)? Attention, I'm talking here to get a true right angle acute, tight, not a soft round wave obtained easily by simple thermoforming of the glass sheet. Scientists of Fraunhofer have developed a method of folding a single sheet of glass at a 90 degree angle without changing the structural qualities and optical properties of the glass. The trick is to place a glass plate in an oven at 500 degree, so just below the point of transition temperature where the glass becomes malleable. A laser is used to heat the glass a little more, but only along a straight line that goes down the middle of the sheet - the rest of the glass remains at 500 degree and therefore rigid. When the supports are then removed from one side of the glass, gravity bends the sheet along the softened line, naturally forming a 90 degree angle. Once the folded glass cools, it becomes fully rigid again.

For more details, it's here (but in German).