LLOYD SHERR:
Fire-breathing tractors that haul 60,000 pounds through
the dirt, rope that pulls, tows, and hauls hundreds of
tons, tugboats that maneuver mega cargo ships through
the narrowest of waterways, diamond that cuts
through metal, concrete, and marble and plastic that
stops a speeding bullet. What do they all have in common? They are the world's strongest,
now on Modern Marvels. [theme music] Strength is a powerful
word, but what does it mean? If you want the strength to
resist being pulled apart, try this rope. For impregnability,
try super strong plat. Or if you need the strength
of the hardest material in the world, try diamond. But if you want the
strength of raw horsepower, hop on the world's
strongest tracker. WILLIAM BILLY BIERS:
This is a toughest class in the world of racing. You come out and win a grand
national unlimited hook, you've done something. That's going in
the history book. LLOYD SHERR: Tractor pulling
is about noise, adrenaline, and competition. WAYNE KEEFE: It's a big rush. It's fun. We may only hit 30,
40 miles an hour, but it feels like
you're going 250. GARDNER STONE: It's
got a mind of its own. Once the throttles down,
your along for the ride. But they're a lot of fun. They're a good ride. LLOYD SHERR: The goal is simple,
pull an ever increasing load of up to 60,000 pounds and go
until you can't move the weight any further. But there's nothing simple
about these machines. At the national tractor pulling
championship in Bowling Green, Ohio, pullers from
around the globe vie to be declared
the strongest. STEVE KLINGENBERG:
This is a new tractor. It's got six motors on it. They're 572 cubic inch. Each motors putting out
about 17, 1800 horsepower. I hope to be the
strongest one here. LD NATION: I've built 14
tractors in my career, and this is by far the
strongest tractor I've ever had. LLOYD SHERR: Limited
only by their imagination and pocketbook, these pullers
build their masterpieces from the ground up. LD NATION: These here tractors,
they're all you make yourself in your own shop, and there
is not two unlimited tractors the same. Everybody's got a different
combination, different tires. But everybody makes
their own tractor. LLOYD SHERR: Tractor pulls
are divided into 15 classes, but the strongest and wildest
is the unlimited modified class. STEVE KLINGENBERG: This
tractor here's an unlimited, and the only thing that
we gotta worry about is the length of the vehicle,
weight of the vehicle, and tire size. LLOYD SHERR: There were three
main types of engines used in the unlimited class. There's the classic V8, just
a little more hopped up, and you can have a
lot more than one. There's the V12 Allison engine
pulled from World War II fighter planes. It's a little harder to
find but worth the wait. And of course, the jet turbines
that might have powered a Chinook helicopter
not too long ago. WAYNE KEEFE: What we have in
our unlimited modified tractor is four what we call
automotive type V8s. You won't find these engines
in any automobile made today or ever made. These are pretty much a
thoroughbred racing engineer. Each engine will dino out at
approximately 2,800 to 3,000 horsepower. They run on straight
methanol for fuel. They're supercharged,
fuel injected. But what we're doing
with a supercharger, we're taking atmospheric
pressure and compressing it. In other words,
mother nature gives us 14 pounds per square inch. This takes that and makes
it 45 pounds per square inch and forces the fuel air
mixture into the cylinder, creates more cylinder pressure,
which makes more horsepower. LLOYD SHERR: Over three
times the air pressure means over three
times as much oxygen available for combustion. As they line up
for the full pull, these monsters of the track pack
more than 12,000 horsepower. What kind of
immovable object can meet this irresistible force. Enter the tractor pull sled. VAUGHN BAUER: With
a tractor pull or when the pulling
vehicle starts pulling, we have a weight box here
that is loaded with weight. And as the vehicle
starts to move, this drives the
weight box forward. As this comes forward with
further down the track we go, it hits a pair of
trigger switches here that drops the back of
the pan to start that. As the box goes forward, it gets
to the top of the box we have a push down that goes off at
the back of the pan to transfer 100% of the weight of our sled
to stop that momentum that they have going. LLOYD SHERR: The entire 60,000
pounds of weight is on the pan, and that pan is digging
into the ground. Although the sled
has its own driver, the weight box slides
automatically on its own track, so everyone gets equal
abuse during the bull. This sport may use engines
that generate thousands of horsepower, but its origins
go straight back to the horse. GREGG RANDALL: Tractor pulling's
origins came from the 1920s, late 20s when farmers were
actually starting to get horses and they would have
these horse pulls. Who had the strongest horse? Then along came tractors. Who had the strongest tractors? And then in 1969
NTPA was formed out of a group of several states
wanting to uniform the rules so that people could go from
county to county state to state nationwide to go
pulling in various divisions. LLOYD SHERR: 15 unlimited
modified tractors run in the final event. There's a method
to this madness. You have to have the
front and off the ground, because you want all the weight
on the tractor transferring to the rear tires. So you don't want to front end
come standing way up straight, but you don't want it
tagged to the ground either. Plus transfer as much weight
off the sled onto the rear tires as possible. In the unlimited class,
we weigh 7,900 pounds and we're pulling a sled that
probably weighs 60,000 pounds. So it's quite a tug of war. LLOYD SHERR: There's no
clock to contend with. It's all about distance. Will the Victor be the V8
powered stampede or Indian Outlaw with its turbans or maybe
Money Pit with a World War II Ellison engine. As they line up to
connect to the sled, it all comes down to strength,
ingenuity, and a little luck. Indian Outlaw has a bad run
and nearly goes off the track. Money Pit comes close. Stampede makes its bid,
but American Thunder with five Chevy V8 engines takes
the course record at 311 feet. Today American Thunder
owned by Bill Voreis is the world's
strongest tractor. WILLIAM VOREIS: I'm
a competitive guy. You like that win. If I was hauling around a
loser, I'd probably quit. But as long as we keep
winning, we'll keep going. LLOYD SHERR: But he
better watch out. His competitors will be back
more powerful than ever trying to claim the title of
the world's strongest. GREGG RANDALL: It's
just an adrenaline rush. It's something that is
really an American icon. LLOYD SHERR: Engines, gears,
and clutches may be thrilling and an assault on the
senses, but in the world of the strongest there's a
special material you can barely see. It someday might protect
you from a speeding bullet. One of the most common
examples of strength is tensile strength, the
amount of stress a material can withstand before tearing apart. And this is the strength
we see every day with rope. Strong rope is made from
synthetic or natural fiber, but there could be a whole new
material to make the strongest rope in history. In fact, one of the strongest
materials in the world is thinner than a human
hair and probably resides in your backyard right
now, spider silk. CHERYL HAYASHI: Spider silk
is an incredibly special class of materials. For one thing if you just think
about it from the perspective of a spider, it's a material
that spiders rely on to reproduce, to eat,
to protect themselves from predators. it has so
many remarkable mechanical properties. LLOYD SHERR: Cheryl Hayashi
hopes to replicate those mechanical properties. An expert in spider
silk genetics, she leads a research team at
the University of California Riverside. CHERYL HAYASHI: There's so many
potential uses of spider silk. You could have spider silk
be incorporated into ropes. And people are also interested
in using spider silk for anti-ballistic purposes,
because spider silk can absorb a tremendous amount of energy. LLOYD SHERR: What makes
spider silk so unique is the combination of strength
and its ability to stretch. And that comes in really handy
for certain types of rope. This string is composed of
hundreds of spider silk fibers and is over three years old. Not only has it
maintained stretch, but it also constricts
when it gets wet. Imagine a rope that tightens
its hold with a simple spray of water. According to Hayashi,
stretch or extensibility is integral to a major component
of strength, toughness. CHERYL HAYASHI: Spider
silk is extremely tough. Now toughness refers to
the amount of energy that can be absorbed by a
certain volume of material, and for fibers toughness
you can think of it as coming from a
combination of how strong a particular material is
and also how far it can extend. If you could combine
high strength with high extensibility,
then there's a tremendous amount of
energy that could be absorbed before that material failed. LLOYD SHERR: Spider
silk has been measured to be five times
stronger than steel, and some spider silk
can stretch over 200% of its original length. CHERYL HAYASHI: It's in
this aspect of toughness that spider silk is really,
really superior to almost all biological materials and
really rivals or surpasses nearly all made materials. LLOYD SHERR: There are over
39,000 species of spider, and each chooses up to seven
different types of silk depending on the
job requirement. A web alone is built from
five different types of silk, but one of the strongest
types of spider silk is the drag line silk
or spider's lifeline. The most common way to study
it is to conduct a procedure called forcible silking. The spider is actually
sedated then secured with tape under the microscope. CHERYL HAYASHI: We're manually
drawing silk from a spider. First, you
anesthesize the spider so that you can manipulate
them without hurting yourself or more importantly
hurting the spider. You have them breathing carbon
dioxide for a few minutes, and then that knocks them out. And then we will take them down
with their spinner rets facing up. We can pull on
specific silk fibers, and we can collect
them on a little spool. LLOYD SHERR:
Working with spiders one at a time in the
lab requires patience and a steady hand. But researchers are making
progress in unraveling spider silks tangled genetic web. In 1990, the first spider
silk protein gene sequence was discovered by Ming
Shu and Randy Lewis at the University of Wyoming. Yet there are hundreds, perhaps,
thousands still to discover. CHERYL HAYASHI: At this point,
we know a lot about or quite a bit about the genetics
underlying the spider silk proteins. But how we can go
from those proteins to a spool of spider silk,
we're working on that. LLOYD SHERR: Duplicating spider
silk may be out of our reach today. No true rope of it exists yet. But there is a man
made fiber that makes rope of uncommon strength. It's called spectra. GREG DAVIS: When Honeywell
spectra fiber was developed, it was a tremendous leap
forward in strength. With this spectra fiber,
we could lift something that is around 100, 120 pounds
before the fiber actually breaks. LLOYD SHERR: Spectra fiber is
actually made from plastic, yet it's a plastic with
incredible tensile strength. It's a very high molecular
weight polyethylene. Polyethylene is a
long chain molecule called a polymer derived
from petroleum byproducts. It's crystaline lightweight
plastics are ideal for rope making. GREG DAVIS: It's manufactured
using a gel spinning process. When we spin it, we're able
to orient very long chains of polyethylene and really
rely on the backbone of the polyethylene bond,
which is a very strong bond. And because of this we're
able to generate a fiber that has a very high strength
to weight ratio. LLOYD SHERR: This process
creates the filament that will be spun into spectra fiber. Hundreds of these filaments,
roughly 25 microns in diameter each, make up a spectra fiber,
which is approximately 450 microns in diameter. When all of those spectra
fibers are woven into rope, the result is the strongest
rope in the world. Rope made from spectra fiber
is seven times stronger than steel rope but doesn't
have spider silks elasticity. Throughout history, other
fibers have held the title of world's strongest. In prehistoric times,
we used nature's bounty, such as hanging
vines for rope, then devised methods of twisting
plant fibers to make them even stronger. The ancient Egyptians developed
special rope-making tools to fashion flax, grass,
papyrus, and leather into the strong rope
that raised the pyramids. In ancient Rome,
the rope of choice was twisted hemp, which
remained the leading rope fiber until the 1800s. Hemp grows fast,
virtually anywhere, and its fibers are
easy to fashion. But hemp had to be tarred
to protect it from rotting on the water. That's where abaca, also
known as manila, comes in. Manila doesn't rot
nearly as fast as hemp, and it's one of the strongest
of all plant fibers. But for the last 50 years,
man-made synthetic fibers, such as nylon and polyester,
replaced the strongest natural fibers for
industrial rope-making. Today spectra leads the
synthetic fiber pack and a Puget Sound Rope
in Anacortes, Washington. The manufacturer of rope using
spectra is a 24/7 operation. STUART JANKE: This is a creole
that holds the raw material packages of spectra. This is the very
beginning spot where we start to manufacture the rope. When we get the
fiber, every process that happens from here on out
will reduce the efficiency of the fiber. So it's very important that
we work on keeping everything balanced and even. LLOYD SHERR: 230
spools of spectra fiber are pulled together for
the next important step in making strong
rope, the twist. STUART JANKE: Each
one of these strands has the exact same
amount of tension on it going into the twist. So everything will
stay aligned and equal and balanced throughout
the entire process from here to the end user
using it in their applications. LLOYD SHERR: Yet as
strong as spectra is, it can be made even stronger-- actually 40% to 50% stronger. RANDY LONGERICH: Puget Sound
Rope has a patented process that actually reorients
the molecular structure of the spectra fiber. We in essence draw the
fiber out and reorients the molecular structure so
that the fiber is subsequently stronger than we receive it. This highly proprietary process
produces what Puget Sound Rope calls plasma rope. STUART JANKE: This is the
twisted spectrum fiber that we just saw in the twister. This now is going through
the plasma process. It will gain 50% strength
making it the strongest rope in the world. LLOYD SHERR: The next step
in any rope-making process is the highly important braid. There are many different
braid constructions. Each affects the
performance and determines the ultimate
strength of the rope. For instance, one of Puget
Sounds workhorse ropes has a patent on braid construction. RANDY LONGERICH: This machine
is a large 12 strand braider. There are 12 individual
bobbins on the machine. It produces a much
smoother structure than conventional plane braids. It maximizes the strength and
the performance properties of to the structure. LLOYD SHERR: Once the
strongest rope in the world is constructed. It needs to be
mechanically tested. STUART JANKE: Here we're getting
ready to do a destruction test on six-inch circumference
plasma rope, and here we've got the fixed
end of the test sample. We've spliced the specimen. One eye is here, and the other
eye is attached down there. RANDY LONGERICH: Since
the rope is going to be used in all
likelihood with a splice in, some form of eye in it
so that you can connect it to something, hang
onto something, pull something with it,
that's how we test the rope. LLOYD SHERR: And
the splice has to be as perfect as the rope itself. This precise art form
is critical to the life and stability of the rope. Any distortion to the rope
will compromise its integrity. So a gradual taper of the splice
is the strongest way to go. It takes 20 minutes
for the machine to build up enough
force to even challenge the integrity of the rope. Jason, the test
machine operator, stays behind a steel wall to
protect himself from the energy that will be released. STUART JANKE: This rope
broke at 400,000 pounds right where it should have broken. And as you can see
if we go down here, there's several
strands remaining. And the actual break
occurred right here, which is where the undistorted
portion of the rope met the distorted
portion of their up, which is where it
should have broken. LLOYD SHERR: A 400,000 pound
breaking point obviously indicates huge tensile
strength, but you'll need more than a strong rope
to pull a 100,000 ton cargo ship into harbor. You'll need the help of another
of the world's strongest, tugboats with
massive muscle power. The port of Long Beach
in Southern California is the second busiest
port in the United States. The largest container
ships in the world come here to
offload their goods. And super strength is needed
to muscle these behemoths through the narrow channels of
this harbor, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In 2006, a new breed of
massive maritime strength hit this tight waterway, the
Morgan Foss and Campbell Foss tugboats. SCOTT MERRITT: The
Morgan and Campbell Foss our 5,000 horsepower tugs
that are on a 78 foot tugboat. That's a lot of horsepower
in a very small space, and these boats are capable of
generating over 130,000 pounds of force on their tow line
to move the bigger and larger ships in and out of
the narrow waterways. LLOYD SHERR: They are 45 feet
shorter than the average tug but a whopping
45% more powerful. Pound for pound, they are the
strongest tugboats on the water today. These were built strictly to do
harbor work, ship assist work inside the harbors. So that's why they're smaller. SCOTT MERRITT: This can do-- pull or push twice as much
as an older twin screw so you have one tug that's
more powerful and stronger. MARTY KUHNS: We're
in the engine room. These are the main engines. They're 3512 caterpillar engines
combined at 5,000 horsepower. LLOYD SHERR: The
strength of these tugs not only comes from
their powerful engines but also from their
ingenious propulsion drives. JOHN BARRETT: And those
particular boats, they're what we refer to in the
industry as an ASD, which is in reference to an
[inaudible] stern drive, which is basically a
propeller and a nozzle to make it more efficient that
has the ability to rotate 360 degrees continuously
or back and forth. And there's two of them. They're referred
to as tractor tubs, because they can maneuver the
struts from the propellers in any direction. These can rotate these
thrusters and make the boat move sideways, crossways. They can go any
direction they want. They're extremely maneuverable. LLOYD SHERR: Also
known as Z drives, these propulsion units are
perfect for inner harbor jobs. DAVID SCHAFFER:
Good morning, cap. One on the bow, Roger. The ship that we're
going to be doing here is a smaller container ship. That was the pilot that
called on the radio. He wants us on the bow. We'll pull his bow off the
dock, and he'll get underway. LLOYD SHERR: These compact
craft exert tremendous control over the ships they guide. Once the cargo ship
is free from the tug, the Morgan Foss can move
on to its next assignment. Tugboats haven't
always been so strong, but they have always been
essential to the Maritime industry. And Foss knows this
better than anyone else. SCOTT MERRITT: We've
been around since 1889, so we're 117 years old. We were founded by Thea
Foss, and she started out by running a single rowboat
out on the Tacoma waterway, and that grew into a
thriving launch business renting rowboats. And her and her husband Andrew
not only built the rowboats but expanded into
launch services, supporting the sailing fleets. And over the years,
they invested into launches and
tugs, and it turned into the business it is today. It's one of the United
States largest tug and barge companies. LLOYD SHERR: Long
before the Foss', steam powered paddle wheel boats
were the strongest tugs. But as the screw propeller
gained use in the earliest 20th century, tugboats became
more compact and stronger. But it was the
diesel engine that made the tugboat the powerful
workhorse that it is today. SCOTT MERRITT: The advent
of the diesel engine, really the mass produced diesel engine
really changed tow boating. It extended the range. It was a lighter weight
propulsion unit that allowed the tugs to not take up as
much space in the engine rooms, allowed them to have
what we would call legs or more distanced capabilities. LLOYD SHERR: But in the
1990s, mega container ships and tankers demanded a new
breed of powerful tugboats. In 1993, Foss Maritime built the
strongest enhanced tractor tugs in the world, the Garth
Foss and Lindsay Foss. These two tugs are
stronger, bigger, and faster than their Long
Beach counterparts. SCOTT MERRITT: These boats
are about 150 foot in length. They're over 40 foot in beam,
and they run 8,000 horsepower. These boats can exert
a direct bollard pull in excess of 170,000 pounds and
an indirect bollard pull well in excess of 500,000 pounds. These are really mission
specific designed to stop a tanker at speed. LLOYD SHERR: Bollard pull is the
Maritime measurement of force that a tugboat
exerts when pulling against a stationary object. The more bollard pull,
the stronger the tug. And these tugs pull hard. DAVID SCHAFFER: We're going to
just pull straight back now. We had about 65 tons
on the line here. See if we can get any
more on pulling direct. LLOYD SHERR: What makes
these two tugs so strong are their engines and
even more important their Voith Schneider
Cycloidal Propulsion systems. DAVID SCHAFFER: These
are the throttle controls to the engines, and these are
the controls for the Voith Propulsion System. MEL THOMPSON: The propulsion
that's underneath the vessel here where we're sitting, the
Voith Schneider Propulsion, the blades that hang down
here that do all the work. It's a lot different
than a propeller. It drives it a lot different. LLOYD SHERR: This
unique propulsion system is similar to a
helicopter with its blades extending vertically into
the water from the bottom of the ship's hull. Rotating around a
vertical axis, an array of five blades with shapes
similar to airplane wings provide the lift authorized
for these powerful tugs. Mechanically linked,
each of the blades smoothly changes pitch to
optimize its angle of attack relative to the flow
of the water it meets. On command, this smooth and
coordinated movement instantly creates the required amount
of thrust in any direction required by the tug. Not only is the Voith
system incredibly strong, it also provides
outstanding maneuverability. DAVID SCHAFFER: Where have
it heads and shoulders above the conventional tugs,
they're not as maneuverable. You can't control their
propellers as well as we can. And then plus the fact that
we have the 8,000 horsepower. High maneuver built
in high horsepower is pretty much the
ultimate in ship assist. LLOYD SHERR: As strong
as these tugs are, Foss has plans to incorporate
even more strength. MARTY KUHNS: With a vessel that
has a 20, 25, even 30 or 40 year service life, you have
to be looking way beyond what your present market needs are. You have to be looking
at your customers and what your industry is doing
and building for the future as well as the present. SCOTT MERRITT: We're going to
keep pushing the boundaries of what we can do on the water. We're going to increase
the horsepower of our tugs. We're going to increase the
performance capabilities and really meet that
demand as it grows. LLOYD SHERR: While tugboats use
inventive mechanics to muscle vessels through the
waterways of the world, a mineral that adorns
the rich and famous needs no engineering
boost to claim its title as the strongest natural
substance in the world. as the world's
strongest, the diamond. JAMES SHIGLEY: Diamond
is an amazing material, and it has a number of
very unique properties, hardness, durability,
transparency to light. It's not attacked
by most chemicals-- a number of properties
that make it very valuable for a wide range
of jewelry and, of course, of industrial applications. LLOYD SHERR: The word diamond
is derived from the Greek word adamus meaning invincible. Recent studies have discovered
the diamond was used as far back as 6,000 years ago in China
for grinding and polishing. In ancient India,
diamond was attributed with mythical qualities, and
it eventually made its way to Europe through trade routes. Diamonds are crystals
of pure carbon. Each carbon atom is tightly
linked by short covalent bonds, which are the
strongest atomic bond and centered between four other
carbon atoms in a compact three dimensional array. This tight cube arrangement is
what makes diamonds so strong. JAMES SHIGLEY: Diamonds
crystallized deep in the Earth's metal and
are brought to the surface by volcanic eruptions
where they are found today in what is called a kimberlite
pipe where the diamonds are embedded in the kimberlite. LLOYD SHERR: There are less than
35 operational kimberlite light mines throughout the world. They are located in North
America, Asia, Australia, and Africa. JAMES SHIGLEY: This is
from southern Africa. This is a diamond crystal in
a piece of kimberlite ore. It's the typical way diamonds
are found in nature today. These are two natural
diamond crystals. Diamonds when they
are found in the earth have this typical
octohedral shape, which you can think of as two
pyramids joined at the base. LLOYD SHERR: Although revered
for its natural beauty, diamond is also
venerated in applications that aren't so pretty. Diamond cuts concrete,
stone, marble, and tile. In sharp contrast to
the jeweler showroom, diamonds have made their
mark in the most grueling of industries. ROBERT DELAHAUT: It's the
hardest, strongest material known in the world for
cutting all types of material. MK Diamond Product has a full
range of industrial diamond enhanced tools. The use of diamonds
in industrial tool probably started
over 100 years ago. JAMES SHIGLEY: When
people cut a gemstone, there was diamond chips. It was then sold
as diamond board to be used in making
industrial tools. LLOYD SHERR: Early uses
including drill bits for core samples,
since the diamond bits could cut through solid rock. Diamond saw blade soon followed. Then in the 1930s, Germany began
using diamond for a completely different purpose. ROBERT DELAHAUT: The
Germans built the autobahn, and the autobahn was concrete
that was poured continuously, and they used the diamond blades
to cut the contraction joint in the roadway. LLOYD SHERR: These contractions
or joints prevented cracks that usually occurred
because of shrinkage during the curing process. They also created an
even durable surface. Then in the 1950s, a
scientific breakthrough revolutionized the industry. JAMES SHIGLEY: There's been a
long interest among scientists to grow diamonds
in the laboratory, and this has extended
back several years. LLOYD SHERR: Although others had
been able to successfully grow small quantities of
synthetic diamonds, it was General Electric that
found a way to produce them on a mass scale. JAMES SHIGLEY: And they were
able to create conditions in the laboratory with pieces
of equipment that allowed you to reach the temperatures and
pressures that were required to grow a diamond
crystal in the laboratory and to be able to do that
on a reproducible basis. LLOYD SHERR: This method is
called HPHT or High Pressure High Temperature. Large presses produce
extreme pressure and heat. They reproduced conditions that
create natural diamond deep inside the Earth. These new creations
fed a growing market of industrial applications. The Eisenhower administration's
postwar federal highway program duplicated the methods
used for the autobahn and created a need for diamond
tools across the nation. Synthetic diamonds
are grown uniformly, so each is very similar. Natural diamond chips
are of various sizes and shapes making the
cutability less perfect. ROBERT DELAHAUT: The diamond
blade consist of a steel core or steel center. Then the diamond blade would
have individual diamond segments, and a diamond segment
consist of synthetic diamond or natural diamond embedded in
powdered metal of various types of alloys to determine the
cutability of the blade. LLOYD SHERR: MK Diamond claims
to have the strongest diamond blade on the market,
the tiger tooth blade. This is our MK 1495. It's a 73 cc cut off saw,
gas powered cut off saw. We're going to use our tiger
tooth blade, which is designed to cut steel, wood, block,
brick, plastic, just about anything you
can throw at it. It's a demolition blade. LLOYD SHERR: This is what
happens when you take it to a 4 inch steel pipe. The matrix just holds
those chips together until it does the cutting,
but as the segment wears down, the chips disappear and
new chips are exposed. We'll be cutting them cured
concrete roughly about two years old with number
two rebar in it. We're going to be using a
diamond blade with a steel core so we'll be able to breeze right
through this piece of concrete. The thing about diamond blades,
they don't have a sharp edge. They really don't cut you. They're grinding
through material. ROBERT DELAHAUT:
This diamond industry has a certain mystique to it. Everybody thinks it's a gem
quality stone that you should be wearing on a ring. Well, that's not true. Synthetic diamond
has a gold look to it or a yellow look to it,
and it's not something that you would consider jewelry. It was designed to
do a cutting job. It wasn't designed
to look pretty. LLOYD SHERR: But if beauty
is in the eye of the beholder and its strength is beauty,
these humble yellow stones are the prettiest
things in the world. So diamonds may be able to
grind through rock, steel, and concrete, but in the
world of the strongest there's another transparent
material that not only protects astronauts but also your car,
your electronics, and you. When you're in zero gravity
and in the hostile environment of space, you want the
strongest protection. And back down on earth, you want
your cell phone strong enough to use after you drop it. You'll need the same
material in both situations, polycarbonate plastic, the
strongest plastic in the world. Unlike the crystal in
structures of polyethylene, polycarbonates are long
chains of carbonates groups, such as bisphenolade
and phosgene. They're linear arrangement
produces a clear, strong heat-resistant material. Few companies have been at the
cutting edge of polycarbonates longer than GE Plastics. And for GE, it all
started in 1912. JOHN CARRINGTON: We were
producing phenolic materials for internal use only
for insulation materials. By 1930, we developed
a business that allowed us to sell
additional plastic products outside of just the
GE applications. LLOYD SHERR: Today, GE plastics
maintains its application testing facility in
Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Here their strongest plastic
is tested and perfected, Lexan polycarbonate. Lexan is used in everything
from bullet resistant windows to water bottles to cell phones
and even race car windshields. And it all starts
with a tiny pellet. KURT WEISS: Here is what the
pellets look like when they come out of the
manufacturing process, and this is the beginning
of Lexan polycarbonate resin itself. These pellets are
what our customers buy to be able to manufacture
parts in an injection molding process. LLOYD SHERR: But
exactly how do you get from a polycarbonate
pellet to a bumper or fender. This is a Husky 1,350 ton
injection molding machine. It's used for manufacturing
a variety of different parts, some very simple geometries
to complex geometries. Like most of the machines in
the injection molding arena, it uses a screw
and barrel in order to be able to heat and convey
the material to the part. The pellets drop into
the flight to the screw. Then as the screw turns, the
pellets are conveyed forward. Once they get in front
of the screw by that time they're already a gelatinous
mass of molten material. The screw is pushed forward. There were 30,000 PSI pressure. We take all that material
and push it into the mold. Mode will sit there long enough
for the part to cool down, and once the stool opens we
end up with a finished part. And of course, GE tests
their Lexan for performance. RICK PONTILLO: In
this building, we do application specific testing. For instance, we can
take a bumper that's made out of Lexan material. We can put that on a chassis,
and we can impact that up against a number
of various objects to really simulate an end use
environment for that part. LLOYD SHERR: This isn't
your grandfather's plastic. In the mid-1800s,
inventor John Wesley Hyatt developed Celluloid, the first
successful synthetic plastic. Then in 1907, Dr. Leo
Baekeland combined phenol and formaldehyde under
high heat and pressure to create Bakelite. Although used in industry
and consumer products, Bakelite brittle nature
relegated it to a small number of applications. However, both
Celluloid and Bakelite spurred the scientific community
to devise better and more diverse plastics. Improvements in
chemical technology as a result of the
First World War led to a succession
of new plastics. Styrofoam, nylon,
acrylic, and Teflon all had a huge impact on society. By 1953, Lexan polycarbonate
was discovered by Daniel Fox and mass produced by the 1960s. It has remained the
cornerstone of GE Plastics. In the form of Lexguard, it's
strong enough to stop a bullet. KURT WEISS: Lexguard
sheet is a lamination of several different
Lexan sheets, so there's actually several
lamentations across. And it comes in a
variety of thicknesses depending on how much
protection you want. So in this particular
case, it's roughly one and a quarter inches thick. This sheet obviously
has been hit with several different
calibers of bullets. On the bottom we have several
9 millimeter cartridges that have been fired at their
sample, and at the top we have 38 caliber shots also
that have been shot at this. And yet even with all
those particular hits in very close area, the
integrity of the material is still there. LLOYD SHERR: Developments
such as carbon nanotubes might help create a new material
that will soon be the world's strongest plastic. But for now, polycarbonate
plastic retains the title. The world's strongest have
helped reshape our lives. In their many forms,
they've constantly taken that which was
impossible and made it possible for protection,
for utility, and for fun. The strongest survive. [music playing]
