This is cool on a number of levels. First of all, though the researchers have not yet experimented with a real Olympic swimming pool, the ability to rapidly turn large bodies of water into gelatin is sure to have major impacts in the disciplines of both cocktail party tricks and teenage petty vandalism. But from a materials science standpoint the polymer really is a breakthrough, exhibiting properties that are pretty strange and exciting, at least if you’re the kind of person who gets excited by material properties. For one, most gels form upon cooling, not heating (think: Jell-O), which opens the door to some interesting potential applications. Further, polyisocyanide polymer is the first to demonstrate a rigidity that matches that found in biological polymers. Almost all naturally occuring biopolymers possess a kind of inherent rigidity that synthetic polymers simply lack, but Rowan’s polymer is an exception. Its polymer strands consist of a helical backbone surrounded by short peptide arms sticking out from the sides. Each of these peptide arms is in turn tipped with a long tail of repeating carbon and oxygen chains that are nicely suited to grabbing water molecules, making it quite soluble. But once dissolved, heating it causes the tails to push water molecules away and link up to other tails belonging to other polymer strands, rapidly building a polymer structure with the water trapped in between. The result is a gel that forms within seconds once the water/polymer mix hits a certain temperature (it’s unclear exactly what that temperature is, and it may vary depending on external factors). Beyond Olympic-pool-sized servings of gelatin, such a fast-forming gelatin mixture could be used to quickly plug open wounds–simply pour in the cold mixture in and let body temperature stiffen it up. This polymer bandage could then be later removed with nothing but an ice pack. Nature
