Pykrete is a frozen mixture of water and wood fibre. Normal ice has very little tensile strength - it's brittle and cracks easily. The wood fibre helps spread the stress and bind together the ice making it many many times stronger.
It seems like a strange curiosity...but these days it is common to mix wood fibre with other materials like plastic and glue to make "composite materials" with improved properties.
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
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