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EPISODE TWENTY OF "ARMED WITH SCIENCE: RESEARCH APPLICATIONS FOR THE MODERN MILITARY," A DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE WEBCAST SUBJECT: CARBON NANOTUBES -- FROM SUPER MOLECULES AND SUPER COMPUTERS TO SUPER STRONG FIBERS HOST: DR. JOHN OHAB GUEST: DR. BOB WELCH, PROGRAM MANAGER, CARBON NANOTUBE TECHNOLOGIES FOR MILITARY ENGINEERING RESEARCH PROGRAM TIME: 2:00 P.M. EDT DATE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2009... (Part 3).

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Well, brittle behavior is not something you want in a construction material. So we then discovered that this brittle behavior could be overcome through either the judicious choice of the type of carbon nanotubes you use or by pre-twisting the carbon nanotube before it was placed (under load ?), and, you know, these carbon nanotubes, of course, are very small. So you -- you're going to ask, well, how can you pre-twist the carbon nanotubes.

Well, carbon nanotubes -- pre-twisting of the carbon nanotubes would occur naturally if they're (used in the ?) twisted filament. Another area that we made some advancement is in our collaboration with our research partners at MIT. We discovered a mechanism that prevented carbon nanotubes from being grown beyond a certain length. The group at MIT is part of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology (sic). It's led by Professor Mike Strano.

Well, we found what was preventing the carbon nanotubes from growing to longer lengths and we also found a method for overcoming this mechanism. Another area that we discovered -- (inaudible) -- discovery is that in fact we went from looking at individual nanotubes to starting to see how we might build structures of carbon nanotubes -- actually placing the molecules together -- and our first thought was that if we make the nanotubes long enough in a structure such as a filament, well, then the carbon nanotubes themselves are attracted to each other. This is known as the van der Waals attraction between the carbon nanotubes.

Well, we thought that if...

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