A New Entry in The "Things You Never Thought Would Be Transparent" Files

Credit: Liangbing Hu

If you're a fan of Star Trek, you probably remember the scene of The Voyage Home where Scotty goes looking for transparent aluminum. You know, this scene. When you watched that, you may have thought, "Transparent aluminum? How absurd, there's no way that could possibly exist!" Or maybe you thought "How interesting that Star Trek managed to predict such an interesting technology such as transparent aluminum," because it is a material that actually exists. It's used in the military, but is too expensive to have practical, day-to-day applications in the regular world. But I bet you didn't think, "How dull, transparent aluminum. I wish they'd made a really odd material transparent. Something like wood." Well, strange hypothetical person, your request has been answered!

Yes, scientists at the University of Maryland announced that they had made transparent wood. It's not a complicated process, all you have to do is soak the wood in a fancy chemical bath to remove the lignin, which turns the wood white, and then soak it in an epoxy, which makes the wood clear. What, you may ask, is the point of transparent wood? Or maybe you didn't ask, because the answer is pretty obvious. Window replacement, namely in houses. Transparent wood is stronger than glass, and more importantly, doesn't shatter like glass does. The process hasn't been perfected yet, so you won't be replacing your window glass with wood anytime soon, but this is still really cool. Those are just two words that I never thought I'd be using together. Transparent wood.