[Boeing Short Films]

[LIGHTEST. METAL. EVER]

The microlattice is a 3D open-cellular polymer structure and can often be compared

to something like a bone structure. In your bone structures, the outside of your bone

is very rigid, but on the inside it's actually mostly hollow where you basically have an open-cellular structure

so they aren't easily crushed yet lightweight at the same time.

[Microlattice is one of the strongest and lightest materials known to science.]

If you want to look at just properties in general, then one would be compression

in the sense of energy absorption, and then the second would be lightweight

in terms of having very hollow tubes. So let's say you have the egg drop challenge

that, you know, a lot of students have in school, and they need to drop an egg from 25 stories

and protect that egg. They would probably wrap it in many, many layers of bubble wrap

and then drop it and hope for the best. But what we can do is back design the microlattice

to absorb the force that the egg feels. So instead of having an egg that's wrapped in 3 feet

of bubble wrap, now you have a much smaller package that your egg can sit in.

One of the main applications that we've been looking into is structural components

for aerospace. So when I get on an airplane and I'm leaning against the sidewall panel

and putting my luggage in the stow bin or I'm walking along the floor panels,

I think the microlattice could be used in one of these applications.

In the future, the material can help Boeing to save a lot of weight

to make the airplanes more fuel efficient.

It's really exciting to be able to work with things that we make that can eventually go into a real product

that a lot of users can interact with.