Apple snags Liquidmetal IP, may just revive the eMac with an amorphous metal chassis
By Darren Murph 
posted August 9th 2010 3:28PM
posted August 9th 2010 3:28PM
Ah, who are we kidding -- we're guessing a true, bona fide headless iMac would hit the market before the eMac ever makes a triumphant return, but it's surely a novel thought, no? In a recent 8-K filing with the SEC, Apple made public that it had essentially acquired "substantially all of [Liquidmetal's] intellectual property assets," not to mention a "perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercialize such intellectual property in the field of consumer electronic products in exchange for a license fee." In other words, Apple just bought up the rights to integrate Liquidmetal's amorphous metal alloys into its product line, which would allow the company to create metallic wares without sweating the typical structural or strength limitations found in conventional metals. There's no mention of dollars exchanged here, nor any details on what exactly Apple plans to do with its newfound IP (shown after the break), but we're guessing the procurement team didn't sign the dotted line for kicks and giggles. 
Maybe the Macbook will bounce like that if you drop it...
@Keanedi
Maybe I'm just dumb...why does metal need to be bouncy?
@Keanedi So original! Teach me how to be like you.
@Keanedi They're going to turn into skynet and start making T-1000's and T-X's.
@Keanedi
Naa its more likely that they will get stronger frames, just like the sandisk cruzer titanium which used to be made of liquid metal ;)
Just a shame that apple bought the company as they only assimilate and not develop :( If just IBM or Nokia had bought them
@Anguigen Metal-air batteries can store up to 11 times more energy than lithium ion batteries. And if it's made from this kind of metal its capacity will be bigger...I'm just guessing. :]
@Anguigen
Bounce reflects strength of the metal...
For example, If apple use liquid metal on their Macbook and iPhone, they can be thinner and lighter than now.
@KannonFoddor
You're jealous.
@Anguigen
I read about this material about 5 years ago I think and the company which created it was trying to make golf clubs as you got greater energy on each shot but were quite expensive.
Now if Apple bought the company to make cases, that will really give them an edge on building laptops. I guess you can find plenty of Aluminium laptops now and that is painful for Apple and their 'exclusive' image. Give them a different and unique material which nobody has and they will market it as a new technological advance on their cases.
Nice move.
@Guimo
Ok, so will I be able to stand on a macbook as if it's a lenovo with this new metal?
@Techtrino Apple don't develop products? I would say they have more products make the market than most. It helps that they don't announce them ahead of time, unlike most other companies. What would you have them do with this tech, other than integrate it into future products?
@Brt312 That would be great. Then all of the irrational hate and fear people have towards apple would actually be justified
@raiden8383 Too bad its not that simple.
@Techtrino Uhm... Apple didn't buy them. They bought a license to use their technology. Apple don't have any part in the development of the metals, they just paid to be the only ones to be able to use them in consumer electronics.
Read the article properly in future, k?
@Anguigen
Impact absorption without damage to the insides. So if you drop your Liquidmetal phone it will be less likely to break (but also bounce!).
@Keanedi I was thinking that and they'd market it as Magic Rebound technology that no one else has - they've already used the phrase Back to My Mac so they probably wouldn't want to reassign it, although they've reused the term iBooks so it's possible.
Lighter and thinner is always nice as long as it doesn't dent easy.
So macbooks bounce now when you drop them?
@cclementi6
No, they will absorb impact better.
But that video was INSANE.
@SolidSnake I think you mean the opposite... if it bounces, then it's absorbing LESS energy during the impact.
@GlynC MORE energy.
@Diabolus in Musica
LESS energy is absorbed. The energy is returned to the object that is bouncing because there is a very high "coefficient of restitution."
This is a BAD thing for drop because the object being drop ped experiences 2X the acceleration over and over again.
@displaysRus
Actually, the energy is retained in the ball. Since it is not dissipated (generally as heat into the air or conducted into the surface) at impact, the speed of the ball from the elastic collision remains high.
@displaysRus Working in electronics, acceleration is not what kills components. Poorly soldered PC boards can easily withstand 1000 G's with not stress marks shown on the solder joints. Boards from Apple should easily exceed 5000 G's. However, if you take the same PC board and drop it from waist level, you'll find damage. While that impact force is high, it's only about 2G's X mass of force. It broke because all the energy is reflected from the floor back into the board and into the solder joint breaking it's bonds at the grain level. Now imagine the PC board is able to bounce, that means the board absorbed all the reflected energy and transformed it into kinetic energy. It accelerates up with an acceleration of less than 1 G. Solder joints can easily take that amount force.
@Matty K
Yes, but that is what I mean. For a moment, when the velocity of the ball goes to zero, all the energy is stored in the elastic compression of the "liquid metal" and to a lesser extent the ball itself. Almost all of this energy is then returned as kinetic energy to the ball. There is little absorption of energy.
@Narutogrey
It isn't the components and their solder that I was worried about. In a simple, small, light system you are correct. However, in something like say an iPad or netbook (or larger) you have a number of independent bodies with mass (display, battery cells, main board, auxiliary boards, i/o connectors, wwan card, fan, thermal solution, etc...). These things want to move. Board to board connectors will shear off. Flex cables will pop off or tear. Components can get scraped off by a neighboring body.
When an object is dropped, its kinetic energy will be absorbed... by something. If the enclosure is not absorbing any energy, then the internals will. Don't get me wrong, an enclosure that does not get damaged as easily is not a bad thing, but I would prefer an enclosure that absorbs the energy instead of transfer it to the internals.
@displaysRus
Yup! Fair enough :)
never thought apple was going to be the company behind skynet
@bobanthazhathel
Actually the robots created T-1000 after skynet(and the rest of the world) was destroyed. All skynet did was build the network. Once again Apple is a step ahead.
@designer989
maybe apple's $1 billion is the next step
@designer989 Actually, I'd say Apple has nothing on Google in that regard... They'd would be the ones responsible for building the unimaginably-massive network that becomes self-aware by reading our emails, documents, and social chatter; and learns how best to kill us in the process.
@macserv
Do you think an AI who becomes self aware through the internet will have an unhealthy addiction to porn?
@fais
only if the AI has a male brain
@bobanthazhathel
I wouldn't bet on that, Jack. I know some very naughty ladies :)
@bobanthazhathel
with so many limitations, its not like the T-1000 or any other bots are gonna get far, now if microsoft made um, hell would break loose
Good for Apple
It can store energy and give it back. UNLIMITED BATTERIES!!! :D
@guydude193
Nothing can give back 100% of the energy if they could find a way of making batteries out of this then they would last for ages, maybe the new iPhones/iPods will have a kenetic battery using liquid metal.
That would be wicked.
Uhhh, You want the case material to absorb and dissipate the energy of an impact. This kind of thing would only help to transfer energy to the internal components, which is unlikely to be a good thing.
@M3 I'm not sure if you understood your basic undergrad physics class. In a normal drop, the energy is reflected from the ground and back into the laptop where the internal components absorb the energy in a small time frame. That is bad. This is called shock, and is a standard tests that electronic companies do to make sure their stuff survives.
When the case bounces (and keeps bouncing until it stops), that means the same amount of energy as above is slowly being dissipated over multiple bounces. Most of the energy goes to the bouncing and less of it is absorbed by the components.
@Narutogrey You got that wrong. At the impact, you need to dissipate the energy in a slow process, but in one shot. A biker's helmet for example will break to dissipate energy, a car would dissipate the impact energy by letting bend and break all components subjected to impact.
Also an airbag will take all the kinetic energy of your head.
A laptop case would protect it's internals better if it breaks under impact rather then jumping around subjecting them to even more impacts.
Another example, a good old nokia phone, dropped from the 4th floor of a building, on concrete. At impact, it's case let loose all components inside, we had to search for them. But it was still working after this.
Just what we need...the rise of terminators. Damn i had so much to live for...so much delicious Caek
@A7X
But is it not a lie?
I expect this technology to be soaked up by the next-gen iPad. They might even make an a corresponding demonstration in their commercial :P
@robosexual
The balls' behaviour does not look realistic. It is as if the table (and the camera mounted to it) are oscillating in the vertical direction, giving the ball jumping in phase additional energy on each contact, while negatively affecting the out of phase balls' kinetic energy levels.
Or something like that.
Ugh, it sounded like that metal ball would never stop jumping at the end.
@HikaKao
At about 30 seconds the bouncing started getting a little scary to listen to.
@HikaKao
Sounds like my bed when i'm rubbing one out.
@Duke
Yeah I was hoping for some explosion. xD
@HikaKao
Sounds just like the demonstration my calculus teacher gave us of what a limit sounds like.
@blazinsmokey
Bed noise sex is so annoying.