Pykrete is a super-ice, strengthened
tremendously by mixing in wood pulp as it freezes. By freezing a slurry of 14
percent wood pulp, the mechanical strength of ice rockets up to a fairly
consistent 70 kg/sq cm. A 7.69 mm rifle bullet, when fired into pure ice, will
penetrate to a depth of about 36 cm. Fired into pykrete, it will penetrate less
than half as far — about the same distance as a bullet fired into brickwork. Yet
you can mold pykrete into blocks from the simplest materials and then plane it,
just like wood. And it has tremendous crush resistance: a one-inch column of the
stuff will support an automobile. Moreover, it takes much longer to melt than
pure ice. But as strong and eco-friendly as it is, pykrete remains forgotten
today save among glaciologists, who express bafflement over why no one has made
use of it. "I don't really know why it has languished in obscurity," admits
Professor Erland Schulson, director of the Ice Research Laboratory at Dartmouth
College.2
Pykrete is the namesake of Geoffrey Pyke, who
the Times of London once declared "one of the most original if unrecognized
figures of the present century."
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/7/floatingisland.php
by way of
Memepool
11:54:47 AM 
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