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It is the stuff of comic books. A luminous orange foam that protects against pain - even when someone hits you over the head with a shovel.At first glance, "d3o" looks like slab of putty or a piece of Play Doh, easily pulled or squeezed into a multitude of shapes.But, hit it with a mallet, or a hammer, or a baseball bat, and everything changes.Instead of splattering all over the room, d3o tenses up, in the same way as a body builder would firm up his abdominal muscles after inviting someone to punch him in the stomach, and the force of the blow is absorbed.So successful is the light-weight material at protecting against harm that it has been incorporated into a host of sports gear, including ski suits, shin pads and motorcycle gloves.Snowboarders can buy d3o-lined woollen beanie hats, while riot police in the US are trying out gloves with d3o-reinforced knuckles.Sewn into ski suits, the material helped several American skiers glide towards gold at last year's Winter Olympics in Turin.If all that were not impressive enough, it even protects against the pain of being hit over the head with a shovel.Richard Palmer, d3o's inventor, is so confident of its miraculous properties, that he is happy to give demonstrations that involve him being smashed over the head or across the knee with a spade.Mr Palmer, a Brighton-based engineer who developed d3o after suffering one snowboarding accident too many, said: "Ironically, the faster the impact, the better the material works."It is not a circus act, it is product that goes into your clothing. Hopefully, you will never have to use it, but, if you do receive an impact, you will get a much higher level of protection than normal."Although the exact formulation of d3o is a trade secret, Mr Palmer, 40 says it is a polymer with similar properties to a lump of wet sand or a mixture of cornflour and water.He said: "There's a number of fluids that when you try to move them quickly they don't like it and they stick together."The most obvious example from the kitchen is cornflour and water."d3o is like a thick liquid but when you try to move it or shock it, it turns into a solid."When the manmade material is shocked, or hit, the molecules inside lock together, absorbing the impact and cushioning the wearer from the blow.Mr Palmer, 40, said: "If you want to protect the body from impact, you need to reduce the amount of force going in and spread it over as wide an area as possible. Our material does a bit of both."It is, however, only effective when placed against a part of the body where the bone is close to the surface, such as the elbow, knee or skull.Nor are d3o-lined clothing or beanie hats a substitute for proper protective gear, such as snowboarding helmets.Mr Palmer said: "Our beanie will not give you the same protection as helmet."But for those snowboarders who choose to wear a beanie, it is a lot better than a normal beanie."http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=485453&in_page_id=1770
As in the days of Noah....
